Divine Divinity is pretty much universally considered the better game.

Beyond Divinity is OK if you don't have anything better to play. Divine Divinity is the superior choice.

Divine divinity all the way.

Great! It's already released, and it's cheaper.

Go for Divine Divinity. It's been released before Beyond Divinity.
And it's considered better by nearly everyone.

What makes Divine better than Beyond? I'm curious.

bump

I'm curious too. I've played only DD, but I intend to get BD here too.

Chalk up 4 for curious.
DD averages better than BD, but many of the reviewers talk about the improvements made in BD: bit of a paradox. Maybe DD got expectations up and BD let them down; i.e. the bar rose between 2002 and 2004.

i've just started playing DD, and haven't played BD, so this is just hearsay to hold you guys up until someone confirms it.
Any case, what i've heard is that DD, in addition to being more original and all that, has a better world, meaning the quality of the writing and situations, details, etc. is better in DD.

The reason why BD is considered worse is because they changed the formula they used for DD. After playing DD, BD seems like a game in which you have to finish an area and move on or something. After finishing DD about 5 times, I couldn't even finish BD ONCE...but hey,..that's just me :)

Thanks for helping, Ebola and hanghost, but I gotta say it feels pretty inconclusive. According to the IGN reviewer (hardly conclusive, I know), BD has bigger areas and better dialogue.
Yeah, I know I can just find out myself by buying DD (I already own BD), but hey.