4-direction vs 8-direction character sprites

For those who have made / are making top-down pixel-art games: 8-directional sprites double the amount of work in character animations... but in your opinion is/was it worth it? I know it depends on the style you're going for in your game, and there are high quality games made both ways. My wife and I are going to start a fun project together (her as the artist, I've always used free art / outsourced, she's never done game art before this project). I don't want to be unreasonable with what I ask of her, but we both prefer the look of 8-directional characters.