Please don't take this the wrong way but something is fundamentally wrong with your main character model. It looks awkwardly long. Especially the legs. I think Pepsiman looked better:
It is a similar game wouldn't you agree?
I think Pepsiman is intentionally drawn much larger than anything in his environment. It also awkwardly stands out of the environment but I think that is due to the fact that he is polygonal where as other characters are sprites. I think your character model looks elongated and just off.
I went going through youtube to share stuff with you and I remembered the first ever game I ever purchased for Playstation had rail running segments:
Please watch atleast 10 minutes as the whole video is relevant to Xenocider. Note that the entire game can be played in a little over 30 minutes. As a preteen this game kept me busy for months and it really holds up well almost 20 years later. It shows how the 32-Bit generation was so much better than the 16-bit generation.
Essentially the most fun part is a traditional 2D platformer, With awesome use of background and foreground environments. Additionally, accessing the ability to have in game dialogue made it feel like a next gen experience. Intersperse the gameplay with a ton of FMV and you feel like the whole game looks as good as the movie. Lastly, we had these annoying 3D rail running stages. I hated them cause I sucked at them and died over and over and ran out of lives. Game over.
I apologize, I went on a tangent. I just wanted to show how balanced the Hercules world looked in contrast to PepsiMan. Xenocider looks worse than that. Graphically the rail segments of Hercules are relying on sprites as well but to me, the world looks alive. It feels like your actually in the movie consequently you have a much more finished commercial quality product that is fondly remembered almost 2 decades later. Pepsiman on the other hand is a low budget game that I never bothered buying. Just spent a few minutes with it a few times at a local game store but it seems to look better than Xenocider.
Yes, you have a technically superior product. After all it is a 2017 game running on hardware that is said to be 10 times stronger than the Playstation. But the game doesn't look good.
Back to my tangent, I think having platforming stages like Hercules would widen the games appeal and would be easy to do if you have a platforming engine. I don't know if you have access to WaterMelon's Project X or Y engines but Yuan-Works are making a phenomenal platforming engine that you could consider adding in to the game or you could consider approaching Senile Team for their AotB engine which also has platforming elements. I know the whole platforming stages will never happen in the game but it will widen the games appeal.
In any case, please fix the awkwardly elongated character model.