An old-school flavoured game with quite nice graphics and a real vibe to it.  Plus the skill system is deep and the game is not auto-leveled.  This means that there will be some stacks that you have to come back to later when you are stronger, although there is at least one section where the armies are so strong that you probably could never beat them (unless you have extremely high or 100% immunity and lots of defense and damage, not sure).  However those ones are designed to be avoided and there is a way around them.

I got this in a Steam sale for a fair % off a couple of months ago, but have only just got round to playing.  It has a real charm to it, and the systems that make up the game are elegant.  There is an emphasis on buying items from the shop - you can get items in chests or on corpses, but most enemies don't give loot persay (although I think Burglars might - not sure if the stuff you receive for defeating them includes the stuff they steal with a successful attack).

(It's available on GOG too, if that's more to your taste.  But at the time I bought it, I did not know it was on GOG.  But I'm not going to rebuy it at this stage.)

I am playing on Hardcore mode, with only being able to save in towns (so when you go in a dungeon, you have to do it all in one go or waste game time and real time going back to town to save)  As well as stationary enemies there are also ambushes which you can avoid with enough power points, or take a chance on running away that is not guaranteed.

However, there is a special ambush that happens in all modes (at least old school and hardcore modes that I've played), and in the mode I am playing in they happen about every two days, so you you have to be ready for them as these ones are not avoidable.  The difficulty and frequency of these special ambushes vary based on game difficulty.  Also based on observation I think the harder modes may have less frequent loot on corpses, but chests (if you can open them) always have treasure. There may also be some other differences such as harder (and more numerous?) enemies.

It released at a similar time to a blockbuster (I think a New Vegas game or somesuch), which is why it might not be well known, but it's well worth the entry price.  It has tons of party combinations you can try, and all hero types are useful in a party - though a reliable method of healing like a cleric is practically mandatory (not sure, a paladin or a few may or may not replace a cleric, although there is a divine summoner one of whose summons is a non-controllable allied healer).  Some combinations are stronger than others, so you can tailor your game based on the hero types you choose for your party and the difficulty mode.

Note, on my 4 GB Windows 7 64 bit system (the game is 32-bit only, not sure about Large Address Aware) with lots of other programs running I find I need to have over half of that for regular save and load to work successfully - however I am pleased to report that quick save and load practically always work except if you have been playing for many hours and your system just runs out of memory.

The leader of the party is always the same (as the story is based around him) but the other five you can customize - name, gender, god they worship (which provides a certain bonus to that hero), and weapon they start with.  And I think you can import custom pictures for your party, though that may not be obvious in-game.

I think it's a real old-school gem with pleasant graphics, elegant game systems and really passionate devs.  Why not give it a try?