If you don't already have Illustrator it won't do you any good to purchase the "cheaper" versions. These are upgrades for people who already have older versions of Illustrator, or in the case of the Freehand to Illustrator Upsell, that's for people who have Macromedia Freehand and now want Ilustrator. Macromedia was purchased several years ago by Adobe so that Adobe could acquire Dreamweaver and Flash, among other things. Freehand was Macromedia's competing product to Adobe's Illustrator, so when Adobe bought Macromedia, they killed Freehand.
As for doing fine quality work, that is entirely up to you and your skills and willingness to learn. No graphics program can make you a good designer or illustrator, there are still things you have to learn and understand. The software is only a tool, just like pencil and paper, or pen and ink, or brushes and paint.
Illustrator can do some 3D work, but it is not a 3D program. And you have to understand that it is a vector based program.
If you are concerned about cost, you could look at the free InkScape, which is also a vector drawing program, at www.inkscape.org