You only need a few knives to prepare most foods in the kitchen.
You need one good Chef's Knife. Most Pro Chefs use this knife almost exclusively. Get the best you can for this application.
They have lots of "meat" so can be resharpened almost indefinitely.
You need a boning / filleting / paring type knife. It will be the one you use next often. Any / all of those types can substitute for the other. A little length helps some tasks like boning or carving turkey but a too long knife will be awkward to use for some paring tasks, so keep it reasonable. 6 or 8 inches is fine. You can supplement this knife or a longer variant with some cheap paring knives if you want, no need to get an expensive paring knife for the uses you will put one to.
A bread / cake knife. Serrated edges and as long as you like.
Little oval divots along the Chef's Knife knife blade help keep food from sticking and don't affect normal operation. Handy when cutting some vegetables and starchy foods like potatoes. Not absolutely necessary but I don't know anyone who has one and doesn't like it.
After those, a few handy kitchen tools:
Good kitchen shears / scissors. I use mine every single day. Does not have to be expensive; just make sure they come apart for cleaning small rust spots that will crop up from time to time. Poultry shears are probably overkill unless you slaughter poultry then you could add them as a second set.
A cleaver. Buy one from a Chinese food store, it will be cheap and very effective. It's a crudely used tool, so no reason to get fancy there.
A carving fork to help with the occasional big bird. Hey, it's just a big fork, no need to go crazy here.
Some kitchen tongs for turning meats in a pan. There are a lot of bad tongs out there, don't get ones with silicone tops or bamboo anywhere. Stainless Steel, best shopped for in person to try them out especially for stiffness and durability at a commercial food outlet. Check the Yellow Pages or it's equivalent in your community.
A good sharpening system. A steel is great, use it often while you prepare and cook. There are many options here but to be honest this isn't a difficult task. To really remove metal to recover badly dulled blades you can buy a carbide-equpped sharpener, they are not expensive, try Cabellas. Use sparingly if at all.
Really, to be honest, everything else is just bling. For the price of a good comprehensive set with a block and maybe less you could get the best of the two edged knives, a corresponding steel, the cleaver, paring knives, the bread knife and scissors can be inexpensive versions, and be done.
If you get the big 15 piece set, you will find a year from now you only use two or three of those knives everyday. The rest just take up counter space and emptied your wallet in return for a fancy looking block and nice handles sticking out of it. I never use Steak Knives even; if it needs one you need to re-learn how to cook steak. I cut my steaks and all table meats with the regular table knives.
I like the knife block sold by Lee Valley (online available). You can put any knife of any size in it, and plenty of them if you want to store your steak knives there as well. Not expensive, relatively speaking. You might be able to find this type elsewhere for less money, haven't bothered to look myself but I own one and love it.
http://www.leevalley.com/en/gifts/page.aspx?p=60774&cat=53214&ap=13
You could buy the few major knives from someone like Five Star Zwillings or equivalent, and take up their low cost lines for the rest for a good overall kitchen show look. For some reason people seem to choose a big set for appearance rather than performance sake, but you will buy too much stuff you don't actually use. Plus practice with the proper few knives leads to better cooking outcomes and faster prep. Don't get sucked into a numbers game, it's a mistake.
