"I wish I could actually see as much as my monitor truly allows"
Have you tried right clicking on the menu bar? That will reduce the interface to just three lines (for health, mana and stamina); right click again to restore the full menu bar.
OMG. I almost forgot. Thank you very much Raze; I played Lion-heart demo again and discovered that F2 rather than F12 would clear the interface area and expose the screen under. I still wish the character was a bit bigger and the animations were more sophisticated but eh ... it is now acceptable as a game at the top of the old generation of resolution.