Hi, I'm not the above commenter but I saw you had replied down here while skimming.
(Also this is totally unrelated to hangups about the phrase "lay person" going on in the rest of this comment thread. Dunno what's going on there, don't really care.)
There's some really great art in Auro. I showed your post to the artist I work with and we both independently voiced our love for your splash animation. Auro himself is also wonderful, as are all the lively monster animations and character portraits.
The part that doesn't work for me is the UI at the top and bottom of the gameplay screen. I don't think that people say "pixelated" in the negative way to refer to the art style of Auro as a whole. I think they see the top and bottom bars clashing with the in-game elements and find a piece of terminology they're familiar with to voice a problem that they don't really know how to voice. Those flourishy shiny bars feel a little out of place. Looking at the title screen, the "About Us" and "Records" buttons actually fit in a bit better than the gameplay UI.
I see there's this gold/royalty/good-guy/light connection between Auro's attire and the UI (would a game about Argo feature dark steel?), but if you framed the UI in a simpler way I think it would feel more freeing to players to focus on the intricacies of Auro's mechanics. It would also feel more cohesive, as the focus should really be on the position and identification of monsters and other elements on the board.
I'm also on a small team and thus bear some responsibility for visual design, but it's probably clear that I'm a programmer and not an artist, so take with as much salt as you like. I just wanted to given an honest critique because I don't see why you need to abandon pixel art. You're doing good work and I think (hope?) players can appreciate that.
Last thing: I really wanted to pinch-zoom in and admire the art in more detail. No need to zoom out, since I guess you want to limit how much of the board you can see at once. Just want to watch that splash up close. :)