...will playing either one give me a good sense if I will want to purchase the 3rd? The first two games are cheap enough that I could scoop them both up without much investment on my part.

IMHO, Nope. I still don't buy or play BG III. And the reason is that they are 90% different in almost everything.

- Originals are on time real with ability to pause whereas third one is 100% per turn (which is the main reason I don't buy it yet)
- Originals are with D&D setting 2.5 whereas the third is D&D 5 (Mechanical rules about how to hit, how to measure power, etc)

- World is the same , in theory is the aftermath fron the final events from the originals. BUT, the possible endings from the second game make it pretty hard to be possible to do something with it (may be wrong here, I'll discover it in a future )

- In terms of narrative, I'm pretty sure the third one is just superior. After all, games have evolved a lot since 98, and the studio behid it has a great reputation.

- Not sure about the view in the map, I'm with the idea that the third is not isometric. May be wrong here.

Now, BG1 is a hard game to track if you didn't played at the time (like Fallout 1 to Fallout 2). And BG2 was my favorite isometric game for a loooong time until Pillars of Eterenity arrived. So, I could reocmmend to try at least the BG2. But they will not give you a good indication of how will be the third one

the story of 1 & 2 is only kind of the same in 3... its the same world and city but about 150 years latter and many things have changed
is 1 & 2 worth getting = yes they stand up well and people still play them both today... that right there tells you how good the story is that 25 years after release people still enjoy playing it

is 3 worth getting = its your money
right now 3 is on special over on Steam and its got about another year of dev time to run... patch 7 [mods] is due out at the end of this year which is going to break the game again [like every other patch has] then they will patch the patch before washing their hands of it so it you only want to play a some what 'fixed' game i'd wait until next years sale but if you have 80 ish $ and want to try it then as long as your system has a good Gpu and you only want single player i'd say grab it now

I don't know where $80 is coming from. I paid $59.99 on GOG and STEAM has it on sale for $47.99. The game is perfectly stable and runs well. No need to wait until next year. It's easily one of the RPG's I have ever played and I go back to Wizardry 1.. Also, it has multiplayer coop.

You absolutely dont need to play BG1 and BG2 before playing BG3. You will get some small benefit like knowing who Minsc and Jaheira actually are, the two NPCs you get from the old series. But nothing further.

You should play BG1 before playing BG2, those two are closely related, and got published just two years in between, by the very same company.

But between BG2 and BG3 there are over 20 years, and its different companies with very different style, too. There are a ton of differences.

BG1+2 have been version 2 of Dungeons and Dragons, which was called Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.

BG3 is Dungeons and Dragons version 5, which is wildly different, though many terms stayed the same; for example many classes still exist, even if they work different ly now.

BG1+2 have been isometric 2D games, with resolutions 640x480 and in case of BG2 also 800x600. Those have been the resolutions computers actually had back then.

BG3 can do 1080p or 4K just fine. Its a full 3D game, with very modern graphics. It uses physics, too.

etc etc etc

I would like to add that BG1 and BG2 and BG3 are all very long games. If you truely want to play all three, prepare yourself for some serious time commitment.

Something that no one has mentioned is that BG1&2 use a "real-time with pause" system for combat. While BG3 has turn-based combat. Some people love one system but hate the other, so that might be a concern for you. I like turn-based and tolerate RTWP.

As a long-time D&D and CRPG fan, yes, I would highly recommend all 3 games in the BG series. That said, as others have mentioned BG3 is very, VERY different from the previous two games in terms of design and playstyle. I would still rate it as a 5-star game (it deserved all of the awards that it won, in my opinion), but just be aware that if you absolutely love the RTwP system or the older D&D ruleset from the first two games, the experience will be significantly different in BG3.

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in Australia the normal price is 89.95 [thats around 60 US dollors yes] and the current price on Steam or Gog

for a few days you could have got it for the 19.6% sale running on Gog which brings the price down to 71.99 Aud or you get it on Steam at 20% off for 71.96 Aud... that 3 cent difference just means Steam has a staff member that can actually add up by typing 20% into a calculator instead of letting the Ai do it which adds the hidden mark up Gog has on its regional prices

yes bg3 has muliplayer... its just that its crap and so a lot of people can't get it working, i mean act 1 will prob be okey but you are unlikely to actually finish a multiplayer game before it crashes at somewhere is act 2 or 3

now to be clear, i played full price back when the game first came to Gog [no one gave me a gift card] and after years of play testing i know better than most where all the bugs still are but i still consider it worth the money/ time i spent... just understand it is new and has issues

They are both turn based. D&D is turn based, by the very nature of it, since its primarily designed for Pen and paper gameplay of a group of players led by a dungeon mater through adventures.

They just have different approaches to how they give you an interface to the turn based D&D.

Btw I prefer the Bioware approach.

For reference, the real time with pause is similar to DAO.