Definitely go with "after". I've never understood nostalgia for bad art, and the "before" picture is definitely bad art.
After running survey on multiple sites, I would say a considerable chunk of people prefer the first one. I would put it around 30%. Nevertheless, the second one better captures our design goals and vision for the game, so we will definitely go with the After version.
If more people had truly preferred the second first version (and if it would have fit the game design), then we would have chosen that one.