Capes is a turn based strategy RPG set in a world not unlike ours. A shadowy corporation rules the streets, punishing those who try to do good whilst controlling the narrative and labelling them terrorists. The key difference? They have superpowers.
Capes runs like XCOM without the extra gumph (this is no shade on XCOM, the modern instalments crack my top games of all time list). You control a team of super powered agents in an underground base. From said base, you can go on patrol, either viewing a cutscene or performing a fight, until doing enough patrols unlocks the next main fight. Any fight or mission can be replayed from the same menu through the simulator in order to complete the challenges (more on that in a minute), and you can also view the in-game lore dumps, change to alternate costumes if you have them, and upgrade your units. All in all a functional but basic system dressed up to match the universe.
The fights themselves are where you’ll spend most of your time. You send a set number of units to each mission, sometimes some are auto locked by the story, but often you can either ask the game to recommend you a set, generate a random set, or you can pick your own. Each unit has two action points and a movement range, which you can spend in any order you like, but you can only control one unit at a time based on turn order, so there’s no swapping between units to orchestrate the perfect combo. If I hadn’t played other games of the genre, this “one unit at a time” business wouldn’t have felt so restricting, but after playing games that let me juggle units in ways that made them actually feel like a well-oiled team, it honestly feels a little robotic and stifling. I understand why the decision was made though, as the way Spitfire Interactive aims to make Capes stand out is, of course, through the powers.
Every unit has their own unique superpowers, which gives them their own unique mechanics to keep track of. The teleporter likes backstabbing, the psychic uses enfeebling debuffs, other units delay turns, disarm weapons, you get the idea. If you play into a unit’s mechanics enough, they charge their ultimate move, which can be unleashed for free on a unit’s turn once charged. Juggling these mechanics and unleashing ultimates as often as possible is going to be the best way to get through most fights.
The difficulty of the game is… just about balanced. I’ve only totally failed once or twice so far, and I’m near the end of Act 2. I have restarted missions a lot though, mainly due to the optional challenges given to you on each one. Whilst the game happily tells you that you don’t have to do every challenge in one run, one of the challenges is always to complete every other challenge in a single run, so if you want all the extra skill points to upgrade your units, you may end up resetting fights a lot like me. It’s not that the challenges are all that complex. They usually boil down to “do X action 5 times”, “activate X ultimates”, “don’t get knocked down”, and do every challenge in one run. The only challenges I consistently fail are “complete the mission in X turns”, as Capes seems to change its mind on what constitutes a turn cycle, and when it fails the mission, with alarming regularity.
The writing is… standard? Modern quips with a good heart. The characters are fleshed out a little beyond their niche, but not overly. Still, I certainly don’t skip any story, so there isn’t much to complain about there. The art style is another story. To call it grungy would be a polite euphemism. The actual 3D models used during fights and certain cutscenes are basic to a fault, and could easily have been run on consoles from generations ago, plus they are rescued to the point of distraction in certain scenes.
If you’re a comic book reader, you will be used to bad (just my opinion, I’m sure it floats someone’s boat) art and reused assets. Overall, these little hitches do very little to spoil the moreish mechanics and charming challenges this package presents.
Capes was reviewed on Playstation 5, but is also available on Nintendo Switch, Steam and Xbox consoles.
