Normal sounds odd when you already a substantial amount of diffuse in there, normal map reacts when there's real time lighting added in and with the diffuse in there might want to be a little careful with it. I like the skin texture though, it looks very gamey.
This is true if you're generating a normal map from a height map, but in this case it's more a matter of not having a good lighting setup in the scene you're taking your grabs from, and having lighting painted into your diffuse that is conflicting with the normals.
this is so awesome pixel! loved the diffuse text. try playing with the spec level to get to a skin like point but still push up the normal details a little. it seems like theres almost no spec for the normal to work with. keep it up cause I wanna see this finished!