I've found MightyBake replaces everything I used before, including xNormal. The quality of the results is leaps and bounds ahead of anything else I've tried.
Got some more characters in the scene. These are all the variations possible with what I have at the moment, although I probably won't be including all of them.
That might be worth going to bed at 5am. Including first place into the actual game is great. I can't wait to see the crazy shit that comes out of this.
some assets of the game: believe it or not the entire game assets included level environment ( excluding characters ) have been made with just one 1024x1024 texture