I personally love the atmosphere on these ones:
Kara no Shoujo:
https://vndb.org/v810
Coμ -Black Dragon in a Gentle Kingdom-:
https://vndb.org/v1896
Remember11 -The Age of Infinity-:
https://vndb.org/v13
About your questions...
-Yeah, I'm more of a "less is more" approach to menus. But it does depend on the game and the format. I don't mind the one on Drammatical murder, since it's not that overloaded (I think about Animamundi as a bad example, which even has frames
https://vndb.org/v131 ).
-Add contrast to your characters, that will give them more volume and allow them to stick out.
-Also, make sure they have a better defined lightsource. It can be fairly neutral (most of the time is an upper-frontal light, but you may want to add a little direction just to place more interesting shadows). And stick to that source, at least for the overall look of the characters (be careful, the highlights on your sprite don't make sense, and with those highlights there shouldn't be any bouncing light on the lower part of the chest).
-Distance blur never. Absolutely NO, at least ingame. On a CG it may work, if you want to enforce a certain feeling (like having a character pointing a gun to the camera, and playing with blur to have different versions of the picture to make a cinematic effect or something like that). If not, I'd even recommend to not using it on CGs either.