nah not really good enough. I am well aware of where the game is in terms of development. btw my impression is that the engine is almost finished, and that development was now based on gameplay.

Be that as it may how do you address the problem? lets assume that everything else in the game is complete how do you address this lack of apparent transition from flat to slope? I think it is an artifact of the art style (which I think is great on the whole) and I'm not sure how you would change it without a shader/reflection engine. So perhaps thats the answer. However I think the apparent flatness of the world graphics is a major hurdle to overcome. That and I was wondering if anyone else feels the same way.

Interstingly I dont have these problems where the camera view is more parallel to the ground (i.e. towards the horizon) or where the hills are more closely overlapping and the pen line of the hill outline gives you distinction. Recalling the interview on IGN about the art I remember that the art style is based on strong pen lines with soft washes with the pen lines being used to give definition....well how do you give definition using that paradigm without pen lines? I suppose you could circle (or contour) the base of the hill, but I have a suspicion that would look a bit crap. clearly you cant use heavy washes or there will be a disconect between the characters and the landscape...

This.

I think the pics look fine. It IS still in alpha, whether thats good enough for you or not. Worst case, don't buy it.

The pics in the last dev post are more saying:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/362576

The problem still remains, somewhat, but I honestly don't think that it'll be a problem

The pictures on IGN have a zoomed in view, so you're not really seeing the whole hill, which makes it harder to tell.  If you look at the picture linked by CoffeeMonkey, you'll see it is much easier to tell where the hills are.  Also, you're right in that it is harder to tell with a still than a moving game.  When you move the camera around, you'll see the differences in the way the light hits the hill which makes it very clear where the land is sloped. 

While we are starting to work on gameplay features, we're still working on the engine.  Often new gameplay features will require changes or tweaks to the way the engine works, or we'll come up with a way to improve how something in the engine works or looks (for example, we recently revamped the lighting scheme used by the engine).  The engine is more of a living project than an "ok, it's done now" kind of thing.

If you are doing the second beta in a few months (the first one is cloth map only so it won't affect this) you can see if this really is a problem and tell SD if it is (that's what betas are for).