What type of 2D artwork is best?

This is more of a discussion thread where I think it would be good to get opinions from everyone, because everyone has there own style and opinions.

The other day at Game Development in college I stumbled across of being bored with nothing to do - thus I opened up unity and started messing around with some on Kenney.nl isometric artwork and it looked great - it took a lot of time and effort to arrange the tiles, with the annoyances of having to move it layer by layer and so fourth. People in my class started to take notice of what I was doing, because it looked good, but also a game could really benefit from the style of art - so we were all brainstorming ideas for no reason, but for a bit of fun in the lesson.

I went home later on that day and opened up my image editor programs (such as Photoshop and gimp) and started playing around by making my own isometric assets... it was hard work, trying to perfect it and making one building took about 2 hours, and not to mention it is 4 colours. So the opinion I am trying to get from people is...

What do you think is easier: Making 2D-Platformer art/Top-Down2D/isometric2D (There is a poll, but maybe you could discuss in your response.
Then discuss what you would actually chose to use if you wanted to make a game.
Maybe you could involve why you would chose it such as advantages/disadvantages and workflow etc.
What would you like to see art wise in a 2D game now-a-days?

This discussion will benefit all I think, because it will help everyone who maybe is starting off developing game art.

To let you all know I prefer to make either 3D Models rather than Sprites, and I also prefer programming when it comes to the decision of programming or graphic design.

 

Didn't a lot of the famous later 2D isometric games literally render their sprites in 3D? Sure, it looks great, but it's time consuming, and these days if you're really going to all that trouble you practically might as well stick with 3D. Cardhunter has an interesting take, using a diagonal view onto "card-paper" 2D assets. Might be worth imitating, because you can get some of the benefits of isometric without putting too much time into it.

Directly top-down is just a weird perspective. I don't think it's problematic in itself to draw, but it's so foreign to how we see the world for the most part that it just looks strange.

I think side-view (2D platformer style) is the quickest and easiest to draw. That doesn't make it best, but with limited resources, there's a lot to be said for it.

 

That is a great reply. I like your view on 3D isometric which yes is a well known fact but there will also be games made with 2D isometrics so it all balances out.

These are the sort of replies I am looking for, no right or wrong answer but it leaves people with perspective on perspective