Intelligent Systems

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door makes safe, yet important improvements to an already fantastic game

It’s hard to believe that the original Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is 20 years old. Yes, you read that right. It’s also just as hard for me to believe that I remember checking out the original Gamecube version like it was yesterday. This remake will feel incredibly familiar to anyone who has played the…

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Fire Emblem Engage Review: Round up the rings

The Fire Emblem series has seen consistent success for its various gameplay implementations and winding narratives that seem to steer the franchise forward in both new and exciting directions. Fire Emblem Engage might be the latest entry in the franchise, but makes dedicated choices to bring the series back to its roots, instead focusing primarily…

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Fire Emblem: Three Houses Review: Defense against the dark arts

Fire Emblem: Three Houses is made up of so many narrative and mechanical moving parts that it feels like it should be collapsing under its own weight. Instead, like one of its steely tactical field commanders, it never wavers in its vision or its confidence in itself. A far cry from the Fire Emblem games…

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Games Review: Codename S.T.E.A.M. (3DS, 2015)

When I heard I was getting to review the new game from Intelligent Systems, I got pretty excited. I’m a fan of Intelligent’s previous work, the <i>Advance Wars</i> and <i>Fire Emblem</i> games and I imagined that <i>Code Name: S.T.E.A.M.</i> would continue the developer’s history of smart design. Sadly, <i>Code Name: S.T.E.A.M.</i> has some serious problems…

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