A lute-strumming Renaissance Faire greets my D&D 3.5 rulebook-compliant Paladin. The air is crisp, the sun is bright, and West Harbor`s Harvest Festival is nigh underway. I traipse across the village green with the carefree bravado that a tutorial bestows, one of my companions flicking spells from a tome, the other deftly disarming traps, and all of us beating down some good ol` boys in a no-hard-feelings ring match afterward (a West Harbor favorite).

But already the small town gossip and back roads dishonesty filter into the day`s events: A pig farmer casts an enchantment to secure a blue ribbon for himself and his super-sized hog; the current brawl cup holders don`t step into the ring without a daggered word or two thrown my way; and plenty of if-looks-could-kill commentary lobs back and forth before the Harvest Cup winners are proudly announced at dusk. It appears that all is well within the `realistic fantasy` land of Forgotten Realms.

But all hell will break loose before the next day begins.

Neverwinter Nights 2 gurneys this hallowed franchise into the operating room for an appreciative facelift. But instead of a nip here and a tuck there, the implants grant width and girth to an engine growing admittedly anorexic.

The two-person buddy system of the original NWN is beefed up to four-member parties (with non-player characters pushing the number up even higher during certain portions of the adventure), with players earning the ability to fully control the characters in their group, puppeteer-style, during every single round of micromanageable combat. Leave the artificial intelligence to its own devices and your amigos will operate with an average level of competence, but prepare to watch them fall victim to the same slapdash aggro issues that also get enemy AI killed.

The generous pause button, coupled with the scaleable AI (this scale ranging from pure marionettes that don`t move a muscle unless you snap your fingers … all the way to overkill hell hounds practically screaming `who let the dogs out?`), leaves no one at fault but yourself if your dungeon-crawling buddies are taken out of combat. The camera and movement schemes demand a splash of adjustment stirred into a tall glass of patience -- don`t worry, you`ll acquire the taste -- as the two are honestly doing their best to work for you, not against you.

Benefit of the doubt aside, you`ve just joined the Babysitter Club when it comes to working out your camera angles, especially in the claustrophobic dungeons that make up half of the D&D namesake. Your screen is going to be ravaged from end to end with hack n` slash sword arcs and boisterous symbol-happy spell effects, but the heavy strategic elements involved are never set on the backburner. The stutter-stop motion complements the turn-based tabletop action of the classic pen-and-paper design it derives from. And considering the insurmountable tables and charts and graphs and statistics (and, and) that calculate each and every onscreen moment -- not to mention a whole lotta 20-sided dice -- NWN2 sinks pretty much any other pseudo-military strategy simulator out there, in terms of armchair tactical warfare.

Again, don`t be fooled b...