Hi Cleglaw, welcome to the forums. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
Frankly, I wish I'd picked up Divine Divinity LONG before I did. It's a great game that manages to blend a lot of RPGs we know and love, take the good parts, dump the rest, and make a wonderful mixture that just feels RIGHT. The most often quoted analogy is usually along the lines of, "The simplicity of Diablo's interface and combat, with the depth of Baldur's Gate roleplaying." For the most part I really, really have to agree, I can't recommend this game enough. I'm a pretty serious RPG junkie, and this was WITHOUT QUESTION worth my money. 100-200 gameplay hours for bargain bin prices is some serious friggin' bang for my buck. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />
Now, the bugs; one of the benefits of picking this game up now when you are (besides the reduced price) is that you'll be able to take advantage of all the patches and bug fixes that came out. Sadly the RPG genre tends to be a very BUGGY genre, simply because of all the variables involved. DD is no exception, and all the reviews were correct to slam it for the number of bugs it had. That is, they were right at the time. Now the game is frankly about as bug-free as a computer RPG game really
gets. Put another way, I have absolutely no complaints about the stability of the game or its behavior, and thus I recommend it without reservation. I was probably correct to wait to get the game, but now is the perfect time to grab it.
Now, as for buying the game, your best bet is to basically hunt for any stores that maintain large bargain bins. Places like Electronic Boutique SOMETIMES have it, but they always try to stock the newest games first and foremost. You'll probably want to find "second-tier" stores, the guys less bound to only the newest games, regardless of quality. If that gets boring, I have at least one link now that I give you to get the game:
http://www.chipsbits.com - I've used them many times for my games, and I stand by their reliability. I'll try to find more links later, as their price seems relatively high. (still worth it) Another option, although tedious, is Ebay. I found at least a dozen entries for the game, most from reputable sellers. Your call; I buy almost all my games online (have done so for almost a decade) and have never been burned. Even when I get desperate enough to buy off of Ebay, and that's saying something. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />