Trippy,
Then really, you must be experiencing the best Larian has to offer! The original ED was fun but difficult in some places. The story, as you know, is amazing, along with the humor and music (love Kirill!).
If you're only discovering Larian now, I highly recommend getting their Divine Divinity (Hubby originally bought while in Australia, I think)-- the CD ROM is about US$10 for it now. The graphic styling is more like Diablo/Diablo II and Sacred, but the story elements are 'typical Larian'. In fact, some characters from Divine Divinity were either brought back or mentioned in ED (such as Seth, Zandalor, and the Imp Zix Zax, to name a few)! You'll see Aleroth in it's infancy when it was barely a village-- had about a half dozen healers (Otto, Lanilor, Mardanius, Joram, and I can't remember the Lizard dude's name) with houses, a grave yard, and a lot of leveling up to do before you go fight orcs outside the gates! You had to be very careful with thieving, you fight orcs, imps, thieves, knights who suddenly turn on you because of a spell, solve mysteries (Dr. Elrath), rescue children, and all sorts of other stuff. Doing all the quests takes hours and hours and hours, but is a lot of fun. The unfortunate thing, is that if you take one quest, you might not get another because they're opposites. You have to be careful of the choices you make in Divinity, more so than ED! Anyway....
I didn't care for the Beyond Divinity much, just because the handling was kind of "clumsy" (it was before they went full 3-D), the story had potential, but isn't really necessary in understanding the arc of the full story of Divine and your current character. However, in the first Divinity, you are the Divine! Kind of weird coming to ED after playing the first Divinity as a female character! hehehehe
Anyway, thanks again, and I do hope you'll give the original Divinity a try. We (hubby and I) still go back to play it often-- it's one of our "top shelf" games (aka, played most often), even with its bugs and stuff. It's a great, replayable game.
Oh, one more thing. Kirill Pokrovsky (musical scores for entire game series) has his own website! He offers his music for free downloading (though downloading is through a mirror site). Some good stuff to be had there, some of it's not so great (depending on your tastes). I really like the "Top of the Mountain" album, and feels a lot like the Divinity gaming. Also available on his site are some if not all the Divinity scores.
All best,
~~CierraShore
