I love Divinity. I is better than II because II falls off during the 2nd half, it's like Neon Genesis Evangelion - they forgot to finish it properly or ran out of money?
As much as I love it, and think it's got a great world, it's not a cohesive little bundle of near-perfect C-RPG that Pillars is. Yeah, I've played it on the hardest difficulty, but I didn't play it on hardcore-1-death mode. I forget what that one is called. I believe Trial of Iron is what I played it on.
I just think PoE and Tyranny are both written so well and have such a unique story. Divinity might have the bigger world and more locations and even more dialogue (though its probably equal) but it's a bit too wishy-washy and hard to follow story wise for me. I can name every character and enemy in PoE and only about 1/3 in Divinity and my Steam stats show I've played both nearly equally. Er, actually, I played Divinity for about 50 hours on the pirated version berfore I realized my savegames would work if I bought it - so I bought it.. so it doesnt show as many. But I love 'em both. Both better than BG and BG2.