I second the idea of using Prelude to start with Emacs, along with the package manager which makes the initial setup and adding modes/stuff very easy (see http://melpa.milkbox.net).
I haven't seen any lost functionality by using evil; modes that define bindings continue to work, and the usual C-x/C-c/M-x/whatever works fine with evil. There is the odd major mode that doesn't work with evil out of the box (usually if it redefines j/k) but most have no problems. You can still use most (all?) regular Emacs movement commands with evil as well.
I haven't seen any lost functionality by using evil; modes that define bindings continue to work, and the usual C-x/C-c/M-x/whatever works fine with evil. There is the odd major mode that doesn't work with evil out of the box (usually if it redefines j/k) but most have no problems. You can still use most (all?) regular Emacs movement commands with evil as well.