Do you know Neoaxis??

#1 Dude, look again, that engine isn't free. The indie license may be cheap but the "source" license alone is 9,999.

#2 NeoAxis is a nice C# engine with an OGRE renderer. There is a non-commercial version, but the commercial version (which you have to purchase if you wish to sell your game) is a per-title license. The documentation isn't that great, but the tutorials and tutorial code (and yes, you will have some fun with C# programming chops) are well laid out.

All-in-all, it's a pretty nice engine.

#3 Personally from our investigations here pretty much all the "indie" level game engines are essentially lateral moves (sure you get a benefit with one or the other, but you also get a bunch of negatives too). But best of luck to you with your new engine, hopefully it's that "magic bullet" you have been seeking to make your game happen.

#4 I think the incentive with Torque is to create something that is playable and fun. As a game player, I'd rather keep it simple and have a fun game over going for flashy graphics. I'm going to be developing a game with Torque solely on the premise that it will be stylised and CPU friendly, with a vision to eventually create it for crossplatfrom/mobile/iphone.