There are some rules in modelling characters that will make your life easier try do to the arms and legs 8-9 quads in scope and don't forget the muscles.
What do you mean by that? 8-9 quads in scope?
I thought the model looks pretty good for a template. Definitely not professional but good for any game. I think you should elaborate a little more about what he should do to improve it.
One thing he absolutely did do correctly was keep it in quads. That way there will be no problems if someone wants to subdivide it later in zbrush or other displacement. So if he were to optimize the model now, any subsequent subdivisions might make an unfixable high-res mesh.
You could also retopologize the model with much less polys. Having a good form such as this one would be a good model for retopolization. Anyone could use blender's retop tools to make a lower poly version.
I think it is pretty good.
