I agree Divine Divinity was pretty good. It did have a bit more hack and slash than I prefer, but the quests were pretty good and the world pretty interesting. You probably can find Beyond much easier but it wasn't very good. I played through almost all of the first 1, but didnt get very far in the sequel. I thought I heard they realized that people didnt like the sequel and were working on a third.

I would also recommend Wizardry 8, great game. One of the last studio made RPG's in my opinion. I never really liked the space elements though.

Jagged Alliance? Silent Storm?

Even though it's not fantasy, I'm looking at JA2. Gametap has it and I've been considering setting up an account with them, so I'll probably give that game a try.

Has anyone played Evil Islands? Been playing the demo and it looks pretty neat. Early 3D engine, so it's a bit clumsy but you can do some neat stuff in it, lots of tactical options. Real-time but fully pausable for command issuing. I rather like how you can sneak past, crawl even, baddies or land aimed backstabs.
The downside is the PC is pre-defined, named, the whole bit. So I'm wondering if the game plays out ok in that regard (say, like Planescape Torment did) or if it gets a bit tedious.

Divine divinity is indeed quit fun .. Hack and slash? Yep but still has some very fun parts...

Kult is good to but it's very short. Also there isn't much character customisation in it. iirc there is 4 attributes and most of the time it's a no brainer which attunements you should choose. But the whole dream world thing is i nice idea..

I never got very far into evil islands it got to anoying to fast :/

I played the demo for Kult and it was ok, but I think I stuck with it just because of Tom Baker's narration, which was easily the best part.

Been played the Evil Islands demo, which has some nice gameplay, but again it's the pre-defined PC, and he is really irritating to boot. Long dialogue cut-scenes which you really just watch, there's no sense of RP at all. And I gather that eventually you end up with a party of characters and I cannot fathom controlling a whole group with those game mechanics. Works ok for a single character, but a group... doesn't bode well.

Seriously considering BG2 again

Well, I got my hands on a copy of Divine Divinity, though it's without a manual (one of those jewel-case only bargain releases).
First impression - what the heck is with the fog of war?! Is my character severely near-sighted or something? He can't see 15 feet away from himself, and this is a serious problem for me. Feels really claustrophobic.
NPC dialogue and voices are ok. Not the worst I've seen no-where near the best, either. Quests are decent and well-integrated. Graphics are fine, though it's often hard to tell if something is just a visual detail or an actual item.
Gameplay is pretty open-ended and diverse, which is nice.

If anything is going to kill this one for me it's the fog of war, it's really too much.

Ehi Gally
can you make a comparison between Divine Divinity and the Eschalon demo you played with?
I played Divine D and found it .... ehm ..... average funny.
But I think Eschalon should be better.

What do you think?

Dude, you might as well compare Doom to System Shock. Eschalon and Divine Divinity are essentially two different styles of RPGs. You cant really compare them, because they are not aiming for the same style in gameplay.

Yeah, I can't really compare them but I liked Escahlon better. DivDiv seems to be more of a, well, "grown-up" Diablo whereas Eschalon is firmly in the traditional RPG camp.

But as for DivDiv, I believe that fog of war has killed it for me. I don't mind things being hidden but when the fog is the equivalent of walking outside my house and not being able to see the neighbours or my backyard, it's too much.

From the developer's forums:

"To clear as much fog-of-war as possible, try a combination of:

* Max Elven Sight (much more effective) and Ranger Sight (if you have the skill points to spare and really want to maximize your sight range).
* Keep any equipment you find with sight bonuses, to use when exploring.
* Toss a teleporter stone onto/into inaccessible regions and move around by repeatedly tossing one stone and teleporting to it (you are not suppose to be up on most mountains, across the river in the south east corner of the dark forest, etc, and will not be able to walk there).
* Cast Wizard's Sight twice in the same location (cast it a second time before the fog-of-war fills in again from the first, and it will remain clear). Hold the shift key down to move the screen focus away from your character and towards the area you want to clear."

Hm. Not knowing how these things work due to a lack of a manual, it sounds like you either need to go with a warrior or mage type of character to be able to deal with the fog of war.

You can get the manual here, in zip or rar. It's legit, from the developers.
http://tinyurl.com/3b4s2q

It's been a LONG time since I played it, but I thought any class could eventually use any of the skills. (Don't remember the specifics though). I think my character in the game was a survivor.

Excellent, thanks!

I'm pretty sure it's like that only level matters.. .

Thanks for mentioning DivDiv. It sent me to Larian Studios, and I see they're actually developing a next-gen RPG. To me, next-gen usually means pretty shooter with stats, but there's always hope, particularly since they're advertising for a dialogue writer who "knows what makes an RPG tick".