Note I'm not bashing the designs on how they look, it just strikes as me weird that they'd take established designs and completely redo them, turning them into effectively new characters entirely with the same name. Its hard to take a character who looks entirely different than what you're use to and consider them the same. It'd be one thing if this was an NES game (or possibly early SNES) where characters weren't detailed enough, but...yeah.
Its...well, I hate to use this example, but Castlevania Judgment is a fine example of what's wrong with that. Could you recognize like ANY of the characters in that game outside of the name? I mean, ok, Alucard was bishietastic, and Dracula had the White Hair + Stache + Evil look...but beyond that, no one resembled themselves in anyway shape or form. Would you have guessed that was Simon if he wasn't holding the whip? Or hell, could have you figured out that was Simon compared to every other Belmont <_<?
Its more that kind of idea, if that makes sense. Its not so much a complaint as much as "Wait, what? Why?" I mean, at very least, they could have kept the hair color consistent, to keep SOME features the same. This is mostly looking at Dekar and Tia here...especially annoying in Dekar's case cause he appeared in Lufia 4 where his design was consistent.
Guess what I'm saying is that while the designs themselves aren't bad, they are poor representations of the characters in question. Then again, it sounds like this is a remake in the loosest sense, and is more going for a whole new game from head to toe, but reusing the same general plotline and characters (I notice there's a lack of Lexis in that list, for example. He's probably in the game somewhere, but wouldn't shock me if his role was reduced.)