Great review Corwin.

I played through the complete game and enjoyed most of it. (>160 hours)
I played on medium difficulty and as a Paladin.

Contrary to the easy difficulty:

1) you have never enough money - I sold artifacts in the end to have enough money for potions!

2) many more fights are challenging (resources, tactics become more important)

I agree with Corwin that a little less uninteresting combat would improve the gameplay. For me the game gets 4 out of 5 stars. Story and dialog is very well done and 15$ is a bargain.