The graphics look uncool because of the Ultima VI style view (after Ultima it was abandoned and no game used it anymore IIRC). It would look better even in simplier top down view or "one-side" view (no clue how it is called, I mean something like that:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/7e/NES_Ultima_4.png/220px-NES_Ultima_4.png ). Of course full blown isometric would do as well, but that's quite more troublesome for several reasons
Even through your graphics are quite detailed (at least compared to my recent game
) it suffers a lot because of the view... I don't know if you are still able to change it at this stage, but I would go for it if possible.
About interface:
- intellect icon is inconsistent, it should be on green backgrounds as the rest (these small things really have impact, you should polish the interface more, especially since you spent so much effort on the monsters and other world things; the player sees a monster sometimes, but the stat icons all the time, so these should be higher priority)
- start monster names with capital letter. Sure, it would look a bit weird in the middle in the sentence, but since in like 50% cases you use it at the start of the sentence ("ants dealt X damage to you") it would be a change to better
- I would really remove all fractions from damage, "0.60 damage" is not something a player desires
- You use full hue colours for text, I'm not an artists but they told me such colours always will look bad, and I tend to agree. To put it more clear, do not use RGB(255,0,0) for red, use something like RGB(230,20,20). It will look better according to some complex colour theory
Generally, I recommend hanging around artist's forums, or just reading their posts, a programmer can learn a lot of interesting stuff this way