Grimrock

Machete, first sword, can be found on level two.
Longsword, the second sword can be found in level 3 (in spiders caves).
Cutlass, the third sword (best out of those three) can be found in level 5 (in spiders caves as well - coincidence?).

-Strength blows. It only increases your attack by 1 point for every two points of strength. In comparison, Dexterity increases Accuracy and Evasion on a 1-for-1 basis AND boosts some elemental resistances, and Vitality and Willpower increase HP and Energy a really good amount. Unless 1 point of attack is worth more than I think in this game, I don't find that spending time gaining strength is really worth much. Of course you don't want it to be TOO low, or else you can hardly carry anything. But if you're worrying about damage, Strength isn't where you want to look. You mostly just want to worry about boosting your weapon skills. If you put all points into a weapon skill, you not only get 2 attack per level, but you also get new special attacks which just gives you even more damage ability. And this is also on top of accuracy bonuses. That's way better than boosting strength.

-Continuing on from that thought, at least in the case of Accuracy, Dexterity isn't worth too much either, since if you just dump all points into a weapon skill your Accuracy is going to get boosted so high that it won't matter if your Dexterity is average. Unfortunately, you have to put points into defensive skills to get more Evasion (with the exception of Parry from the Sword skill, Fast as Lightning from the Unarmed skill, and anything that boosts Dexterity), which you're often not going to do a whole lot of since offensive skills are blatantly better in this game. So Dexterity is worth something there. Also, Dexterity boosts some elemental resistances, so that's always good. It's up to you to decide if these things are important to you or not.

-Vitality, to me, is worth a lot. It not only gives you more HP to start with, it also continues to give you more HP as you level up. On top of that, it increases some elemental resistances. Of course, like somebody else already said, gaining Vitality later doesn't retroactively give you more HP for previous levels, which is unfortunate. This makes Vitality boosts from skills worth less than simply starting with a lot of Vitality. So if you're making a damage-soaking character, don't skimp on this in character generation, maxing it out and also tacking on the Healthy trait which gives you 2 more points. Then just raise whatever skills you want, not worrying about whether or not they boost vitality.

-Willpower. It's like Vitality for mages, though offensive rather than defensive. Just like Vitality, max it out and get the Sharp Mind trait if you're making a mage, so you can just throw spells all day. Then don't worry about whether or not skills boost it.

-As has been mentioned earlier in this thread, swords rock. Easily the best melee weapons in the game. They're fast and powerful, and get even faster once you get the Flurry ability, and again when you get Sword Master. Even if you don't get the absolute most Attack out of swords, quantity of attacks wins over quality by far. Basically, swords DPS pretty hard. Also swords have the nice Parry ability, which give you 5 extra Evasion. Also, as somebody mentioned already, you can run two sword users because the second best sword (The Sword of Nex) is just about as good as The Dismantler. It does a bit less damage, but is faster and gives a nice accuracy boost. So it'll hit more often, which makes up for the damage loss.

-You know what else rocks? Bows. While Missile and Throw skills both basically give you the same sets of abilities, Bows tend to win out since you get better attack boosts, and you can enchant the ammo if you feel like messing with magic. Furthermore, just like swords, you can run two bow users pretty easy. Give one person a regular bow and another a crossbow, and you're good to go, especially since they both use unique ammo. They don't have to share like throwers would. Also, the Missile skill nets you 4 extra points of Dexterity total, wheras the Throw skill gets you 4 strength. It's pretty clear which boost is more useful. Once you get the skills that reduce the attack cooldown and the Volley skill, you basically have a machine gun nest in the back of your party.

-Daggers are cool, but to me just feel like a poor man's sword. I just recently ran a 100% melee team by giving two rogues 12 points in Assassination for the Reach ability, and gave them both daggers, and put them in the back. It was fun because I didn't have to keep track of ammo or Energy, heh. Also procing multiple Flurries at once was always cool. I gave them all speed potions and took down the Undying One so fast in the end that he could barely talk. Aside from that scenario, or the scenario where I really want a backstabber, I can't really say I'd go out of my way for them. In front a sword fighter is better, and in the back a bow rogue is better.

-Axes and Maces. Both are slow and powerful. Axes boost your strength by up to 4 points, and Maces your vitality. The vitality is silightly more useful since it gets you more HP and also boosts some elemental resistances. Plus the Icefall Hammer is way cooler (pun not intended) than the Ancient Axe if you ask me, since it can randomly freeze enemies. The only real point of contention is their two final abilities. Axes get 20 extra Attack when you reach skill level 50, and Maces get the ability to completely ignore armor. The final axe ability is probably better since honestly I don't know how much enemy Protection is really helping them. Still, swords are better than both since they just hit more often. Maces fail in the face of Unarmed when it comes to an offensive skills that also boosts defensive abilities. So really, Axes and Maces are both pretty much worthless.

-Unarmed! It's so dumb but kinda fun at the same time. The major drawback is that if you're going to go unarmed, you probably want to get the Fist Fighter trait for that extra 6 attack, which of course eats of a trait. The only other non-skill boost in attack will later come from the Pit Fighter gloves, which gives you 7 attack (6 for unarmed, 1 more from the 2 strength it gives). This is a total of 13 Attack, which is only about as good as the Fist Dagger. As for the Unarmed skill itself, It's actually pretty interesting. It boosts your Strength a decent amount (though you know how I feel about strength by now), it boosts your HP by 40 overall, and boosts the crap out of your Evasion, since it boosts your Dexterity by 10 overal AND gives you 20 Evasion at one point. Unarmed is probably the most Evasion-boosting skill aside from Dodge itself, and also the most HP boosting skill aside from Armor. You could make a pretty boss front-row Evasion-based character with it, and even a pretty good damage-soaking tank due to the extra HP. They're probably going to get out-damaged by everyone else though. You'd think Unarmed would have "Flurry of Blows" as an ability, or an ability that makes the attacks cooldown shorter. Disappointing.

-Defensive skills. Dodge Dodge Dodge all day. Not only do you get tons of extra Evasion which is worth SO much more than Protection, but it causes you to get double from your cloak and the Lurker set of clothing. A rogue with those bonus-doubling abilities, a Scale Cloak and all four pieces of the Lurker set is downright untouchable by melee. This blows Armor out of the water. A fully defensive Rogue is a better tank than a fully defensive Fighter, hands-down. Of course, you're probably going to be investing mostly in offensive skills, so...

-I have to talk about magic of course. I tend to prefer brute force physical methods, but magic is still plenty fun. Fire is hands-down the best element for damage. Once you have the Greater Fireball ability AND Zhandul's Orb, a fire mage is simply going to blow away the opposition. Unless, of course, we're talking about Uggardians. I actually ran a team with just a pure fire mage, and every Uggardian made him utterly useless. Because of this, a lone mage should probably actually look into using two elements, not just one. One element will always be Fire, and you'll spend 10 points in spellcraft to get the casting cooldown reduction ability, and 24 points in Fire to get Greater Fireball. The second element is up to you, really. One thing to keep in mind is that the second best magic weapon in the game is the Shaman Staff, which boosts Earth magic like Zhandul's Orb boosts Fire magic. So Earth is a consideration since it'll be powerful. Improved Poison Bolt requires 23 points. You'll probably be throwing tomes of infinite wisdom at your mage to get all this crap. Of course, you can also get the Tome of Fire for the mage, which gives him 3 skill points in fire, freeing them up for something else. Greater Frostbolt requires 24 points, and Greater Lightning Bolt requires 27 points for some reason. Probably because that Invisibility spell gets in the way. So I guess only go Air if you really like lightning and invisibility, and only go Ice if you really like freezing enemies. Defensively, the Fire and Poison shields are probably the most useful, since most elemental damage you'll face will probably either be Fire (Uggardians) or Poison (Herders and various traps).

Front row: Two Sword Fighters. One would be a Lizard Man with max Dexterity and the rest of the points in Vitality, and the traits Agile and Evasive. Through the game I'd put all points in the Sword skill, and give him all the Lurker equipment, and also the Pit Fighter's gloves for lack of anything better to put on his hands. The second would be a Minotaur with max Vitality and the rest of the points in Dexterity, and the traits Healthy and Tough. I'd also put all points in the Sword skill, and give him all the best heavy armor. Yes, that means the character would take a massive Evasion hit since he'd have no armor proficiency, but I don't care. He'll be able to take the hits. As for weapons, the Lizard Man would eventually get the Dismantler, and the Minotaur would get the Sword of Nex, since it's Accuracy boost balances out his middling Dexterity. Alternately, I could make one of them into an Unarmed Fighter or Rogue for the better HP and Evasion they'd have, but that would dial back my damage, which I don't like. Especially if I still chose the defensive traits over the Fist Fighter trait. I probably wouldn't use an unarmed character, unless I just wanted to spice things up.

Back row: This offers up more variety. I'd go with two Missile Rogues, a Missile Rogue and a Fire/Earth Mage, or two Mages of some combination of all four elements. A Missle Rogue would be a Minotaur with either max Strength and the rest of the points in Vitality, or vice versa. I'd probably go with the max Vitality since two points of Strength isn't really missing much besides some carrying capacity that I can do without. I'd give him the traits Aggressive and Head Hunter, for max damage boosting. I'd put all points in the Missile skill, and give him all the hand-me-down best armor from the front row Minotaur. If I have just one Missle Rogue, he just gets whatever is the best bow at the time. If I have two, one gets an arrow-shooting bow and the other gets a crossbow. A Mage would be an Insectoid with max Willpower and the rest of the points in Vitality, and the traits Aura and Sharp Mind. They'd get 10 points in Spellcraft, and then all the rest of the points in whatever elements they're focusing on. They'd get all the Tomes of Infinite Wisdom, and whoever is using Fire would get the Tome of Fire. I'd throw either light armor or just clothing on him, though I'd always give him the Conjurer's Hat and the Diviner's Cloak in either case. A single Mage would get both Zhandul's Orb and the Shaman Staff. With two, they'd each go to whoever is using Fire and Earth, respctively, and then the Whitewood Wand and the Orb of Radiance would be distributed between them however I see fit. I'd probably never use two mages though, since it'd be really hard to get all of their Greater/Improved abilities without grinding snails/skeletons/crabs/uggardians/ice lizards, which isn't a fun prospect. With a Missile Rogue and a Mage, I'd have the Mage always enchanting arrows/quarrels with either Fire or Poison as I deemed useful at the time.

Alternately, you can have a Reach rogue or two in the back row. I'd set them up like Missile Rogues race-, stat-, and trait-wise, though an Unarmed one would get Fist Fighter rather than Aggressive. Ultimately though, I'd say a dagger rogue would be better since they can get a bit more Attack for their trouble. And overall, a Missile Rogue is just flat-out better. Especially since they can synergize nicely with a Mage if you have one, and a Melee rogue can't.