Hello! I've been hearing great things about Eschalon 2, and that 1 is good also but has some more annoyances. I imagine this has already been asked plenty times before, but in order to fully enjoy Eschalon 2 should I play the 1st, or would I be alright with just the 2nd game?

I would recommend playing Book 1 just to get the feel of the game.

Not really needed, you get some info at the start Won't give you all the details, but it should be enough to understand what happened.

Old thread but someone else might be interested in this.

Eschalon book1 is slightly harder game, slightly less refined so its easier to get more disease, get burned by stepping on traps and stuff so for beginner its better to just go for eschalon book2.

But if you go, turn the difficulty to hardcore. Its more involving and you dont fool around when its harder. Thus its more interesting to progress.. :)