D, I am about to buy this classic off of ebay because you seem to have an orgasm every time this game is mentioned.
Good idea.
Just one question, what the heck is Beyond Divinity?
Beyond Divinity's a sequel, but it's not a sequel. It's the follow-up to Divine, but it is not Divine Divinity 2. Larian is currently at work on "Next-Gen Divinity", which many believe will be Divine Divinity 2.
Get the first game like you're planning on, though. Sequel is better played after, and I think the first is probably a bit better. But yes, an excellent game.
Beyond Divinity's gameworld is not as open as Divine is. Beyond's gameworld is separated by Acts, whereas Divine is just an open gameworld, pretty much. Beyond Divinity is very good, though.
Though, on another note, BD is much darker. And was branded w/ an M-rating, b/c of its violence and gore. BD also has you control
two characters; yourself (or whatever you create) and a Dark Knight. Dark Knights are evil characters, basically. He's an interesting character, b/c he ALWAYS is interacting w/ you -- telling you normally to do the evil thing and has some evil things to say. You and a Dark Knight have been magically bound together by an evil god, so the gameplay mechanic is if one of you die, you both die -- Game over. The objective is to somehow get the magical tie separated. Beyond Divinity though, does allow for more options in quests for finishing them than Divine; namely, often a good and an evil choice in quests for BD. BD has a new zoom in and zoom out feature, in which you can zoom in and out for battles to see them closer or further away.
BD has another game mechanic which is interesting. In each Act, if you can find a portal key to a "Battlefield", you can visit these at any time and open the portal to one up. What these are happen to be randomly generated worlds, populated w/ NPC's and (usually Fed-ex or kill someone, yet not so complicated type of) quests. If the game gets TOO Hard for you, you should go visit one so you can level up.
I like Beyond Divinity, but this is my warning to you: it's STARFORCE equipped. Many games published by Hip Interactive are SF-equipped. This would be, unfortunately, one of them.
I'm glad Divine wasn't equipped w/ Starforce. CDV published it.
Another rule about the Divinity games -- get the latest patch for it. They were both buggy out the box.
