The new update that makes enemy turns faster in Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. has been available for a while and since then, our original reviewer Bryan Rose has gone back to the game to see if his opinion has changed at all. Also see below for the thoughts of Neal Ronaghan, someone who didn’t touch the game until post-update.

Bryan Rose (NWR’s original Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. reviewer): The enemy turns are a lot quicker. This is something that wasn’t a dealbreaker how it was originally, but the enemy turns before are really, really long. I don’t know why I didn’t find this to be a bigger deal than most (maybe because I have a short attention span?). Still, I can assure you that the changes here are for the better. Missions move a lot quicker and feel like less of a chore than before. It was especially frustrating when the challenge of the game encouraged you to replay chapters, because the downtime during enemy turns would feel even more incredulously long when you replayed a mission.

The update doesn’t change my overall perception of the game. There are things to like about Code Name: S.T.E.A.M, but its difficulty spikes are still a major turn off for me. At least now I’ll die quicker than I usually did before the update came out. This latest update at least fixes an issue that bugged a lot of people when it first came out. Hopefully those who were standoffish about buying the game due to this issue will give it another shot!

Neal Ronaghan: After loving the demo, I was a little turned off by the mixed reaction Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. received at launch. Following the update that seemed to remedy one of people’s biggest gripes, I finally dove in to the full game. I don’t feel like anything is lost in translation with the sped-up enemy turns. It makes me pay closer attention to them, actually, as they go by so quickly. I’m playing on a New 3DS, so the turns are sped up three times the original speed (if you’re playing on an old 3DS, it can only go as fast as two times). The missions feel a lot snappier, and the game moves at a very brisk pace with the decreased downtime. It seems like Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. might have been tougher to recommend without reservations before this update, but now, this definitely seems like a top-shelf 3DS strategy game.