I dont mind high number of colours, I tend to manually select colours from 24bit palette too, I think bad habit for pixelart, but ... .well, I m used to it. Nice piece here.
High color count probably comes from my habit of taking colors randomly from color wheel and trying to smoothen every rough edge. I started doing pixel art only recently and have troubles with working with fixed/limited palette.
The color count is ridiculously high, but readability and detail look very nice.
I don't think high number of colors is such a bad thing in pixel art, unless you personally aim for a small number. You're still picking each color and placing it separately after all. But i guess there are, uh, standarts and traditions everywhere, so i can see why people keep telling me my color count.