I didn't say I was ditching my cleric, just that I wasn't happy with her performance, largely because she can't hit worth a darn and seems to be as much of a damage magnet as Jaheira from Baldur's Gate. :) I'm only now getting up to the point where she's beginning to get things like Mass Stun Removal, so I think she'll begin to come into her own once I correct her attribute distribution and do another round of equipment upgrades.

Went with:

Explorer, Soldier, Barbarian
Thief, Cleric, Mage

Doing pretty well so far, about 12+ hours into the game. I recommend choosing at least one Thief and one Mage. Other than that, just make sure to pick many different classes, to make your group more versatile and balanced.

C'mon Numantian! I'm super-excited to play this. I bought it while it was on sale, but I'm waiting for the Linux version, which is apparently in beta now. The race is on between Numatian and Larian - who is going to get me my next Linux RPG?

I'm currently playing with this line-up myself. I'm loving the game so far. I would second what CharlesGrey said and recommend including a Thief and Mage in your party, but I'd also add Cleric to that list. I'm still early in the game so I haven't really gotten to see the Cleric shine yet, but from what I've read, they're all but imperative in the late game.
You could probably get by without a Thief by handing over utility skills to the Explorer, but a Thief with a handful of shurikens is just awesome.

So far my cleric has been my least useful character, but if that is true then I'm glad I brought him along. :P

By the way, does anyone know what the official "standard" party is? Seems like everyone prefers to create their own character group.

It's true that the Explorer can learn to disarm traps, but it costs a lot more skill points for him to raise his disarm ability than it does for the Thief. IIRC, it's 3 points for the Explorer to go up one trap-disarm level and only 1 point for the Thief. To me it makes more sense to put the Explorer's points into terrain movement, hunting, and camouflage early on, so you can minimize costly trips back to town. I do bump perception on both though---sometimes my thief will catch something the explorer missed his roll for, and vice-versa.

The cleric will end up with spells that can cure curses and diseases, which is the only free way to remove them. That alone will be pretty huge, I'm thinking. They're just so weak starting out, it seems.

I agree, and I love how cheap those skills are for the thief. I'm focusing on maxing knowledge of herbs and knowledge of terrain on my explorer, with some other points scattered a bit, but was unsure as to whether camouflage would be worth the investment.

You guys are really making me want to play this...

No camo for me. I plan on fighting everything :)

The skill sheet I found on the internet says thief skills costs 2 points for explorer, and 1 for thief. I have no idea which is correct, 2 or 3.

I thought the same thing regarding camo. "Ah, I'll save the points for something else, it'll be fine."
How wrong I was. After getting jumped a few times by random packs of ten enemies to my six, all of whom get first shot because it's an ambush situation?
I started rethinking the camo skill.

Ummm.. I'm not sure about this.. the flash-y graphics kinda puts me off :\
How are story, pacing, gameplay, ui, bugs?

Story - Generic. You're the chosen one, the gods are fighting with each other, and you've been picked out of everyone on the planet to be the one who fixes everything.

Pacing - Somewhere between slow and glacial. Everything either wants to kill you or make you spend money, so progression is very slow going.

Gameplay - Serviceable, but very, very slow.

You have to get into a routine to progress.
Pick crops for food or money, keep track of where food grows wild and grab it every couple days game-time, curse at the priestess when you have to spend 25 percent of your money at a time because people got cursed or poisoned, try to thread the needle between encounters you have no chance whatsoever of beating and encounters that will only put 2 to 5 people of your 6 person group on their ass, sending you back to the inn to spend more coin to heal them, and scraping enough coin together to get some kind of armor and weaponry for your party.

Also, you really need to enjoy turn-based combat. If not, you might as well skip the whole thing, since you have to do a lot of it. Lots of tough fights, lots of enemies with extremely large amounts of hit points, and lots of enemies who love to use stacking poison or bleeding damage when they're not using area of effect spells to crush your characters.
Additionally, every single melee character I have can't hold a candle to a mage with plenty of power points to cast spells with. The balance feels very off when it comes to any fighting that isn't magical.

UI - The vagueness shows up here. You'll see classes but not be able to see their pros and cons clearly, you'll see stats for things like weapons but not know what they are, you'll get skills but not know if you should be saving points for later since you only see what you're getting next level, not 2 or 5 levels down the road.
Looking online will be a regular occurrence until you memorize it all.

Bugs - Haven't run across any. The game does a good, stable job of murdering me at every opportunity.

Woa, quite an harsh review!
But very detailed and useful.
Thanks CarrionCrow, +1

It's true it's a harsh game, for every reason CarrionCrow said. I'm also having a great time playing it, possibly because of all the harshness. I don't feel hopeless about progressing, because progression does come, but you absolutely feel that you earn every single advance you make. The biggest criticism I have so far is that poison is way out of line. I'm at L9 and so far there are no direct ways to combat it except for rare loot drops. An anti-venom spell would be great (have to go back to read the deluxe guide to see if there's one that shows up later, but really it should be available very early).

EDIT: Okay, there is a poison removal spell, but it's not available until L13. IMO this should appear at L5 or 6, before Mass Stun Removal.