Ishar was a pretty neat game series. Nice graphics (for the time), immersive environments, good story, and some unique aspects in the gameplay. Party psychology was probably my favorite aspect, especially when you decided that someone in your party had to go. You could try to dismiss them and possibly be overruled by the other party members voting against you (who's in charge here?). Or you could just simply murder them, which can have the unfortunate consequence of starting a party civil war as the victim's friend may want revenge.
While the the interface fairly simple and easy-to-use, it still follows the "real-time" aspect that you see in many other games of the time like Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder. Basically, this means that combat will happen in real-time with monsters slashing at you every few seconds, sometimes faster. In turn, you fight back by clicking on the different icons to attack, cast spells, etc. and each character has their own sets of icons, so you'll be constantly clicking back and forth between the different characters for each seperate action they do. This has quite the love/hate relationship with people. Some love the control it gives and the fast pace of it. Others, like myself, find it very tedious and annoying, especially when you misclick and waste an action. Or worse, when you forget about one of your party members as you've been focusing on the ones with the faster speed and you realize you've just lost the battle because that one party member was just sitting around watching everyone else die. I always wished there was some sort of "fire at will" option that I could put on some of the characters. This is probably why I played a lot more of the turn-based games like Might and Magic back in the day...
Ranting about the combat aside, Ishar is still one of those great role-playing experiences from the past that you should definitely try.