Capes Review - Gamecritics.com

Super Strategic

HIGH Great characters, great superhero vibes, great concepts.

LOW The frustration and annoyance of the pre-patch experience.

WTF How did the “Never Meet Your Heroes” level pass the sniff test?

*Author’s Note: This review is based on v 1.200.00, made available for consoles on August 19, 2024.

Although I love the turn-based strategy genre, I’ll be the first to admit that it can sometimes feel a little static thanks to adherence to long-established tropes, styles and systems. I don’t see many developers rocking the boat in a major way, but when I do find a title taking some risks and trying something different, it’s a delight — and Capes is definitely on my ‘delight’ list.

In a world where superheroes are an established part of life, an evil corporation takes control of a city, isolating it from the rest of the country. Federally-sanctioned superheroes aren’t allowed to move in for political reasons and the homegrown heroes that should have defended their citizens were killed long ago, so it’s up to a brand new crop of supers to fight back.

Capes features turn-based, team-based action shown from an isometric perspective, with a camera offering rotation and limited zoom. Each area is split into squares and filled with enemies scattered amongst various elevations, hazards, pits, and obstacles. However, while this foundation is similar to others in the genre, it’s the characters and team mechanics where Capes shows its ingenuity.

With a maximum of four player-controlled characters per mission, Capes offers a variety of heroes that are designed to double down on the idea of working as a unit in ways that go beyond covering someone’s back or laying down suppressive fire. While each hero is capable of acting on their own, gameplay nudges the player towards thinking about spacing, combos, and positioning in ways that are unusual for the genre.

Looking at the cast, they’re an appealing bunch that have a variety of personalities and abilities. The devs spend a lot of time developing each one, including high-quality voice acting for all dialogue and plenty of cutscenes and interactions that flesh out the world and how each hero feels about their part in it.

The core of the team is Facet, a tank-type who can cover his body in tough green crystals. Leaving his prospective law career behind, he joins the fight to make a real difference. He’s soon joined by Rebound (a fragile teleporter who’s great at backstabbing) and Mindfire, a wheelchair user who can levitate and employs considerable telekinetic strength on the battlefield. This resistance movement keeps growing until the roster reaches eight available heroes, each different from the rest.

Between missions they’ll chat about what’s left of their lives and the nature of power and responsibility. The question of whether violence is acceptable to achieve a goal also comes up. The team’s leader, a surviving old-school super from the previous generation, is a hardliner that sees eliminating threats as the best way towards peace, while the younger crew often wonder if he goes too far. It’s a classic struggle but a valid one, and these concepts are explored until the very end. No spoilers, but I appreciated the finale’s setup and its resolution. Fans of things like The Boys and its ‘take-heroes-off-their-pedestals’ approach will find similar tones to appreciate.

On a smaller scale, I appreciated this crew not just as characters, but because they felt so different to play. Their powers and abilities are far from the norm, and not only is it unusual to have such a variety of options, every member on the team can synergize with others to enhance or alter their effects — it’s still turn-based tactics, but a very different flavor.

For example, Rebound can deliver devastating backstabs when she’s able to get behind an enemy by teleporting or otherwise, but if she’s in proximity to Facet, he’ll generate a giant crystal for her to inflict extra damage with. On the other hand, if Mindfire is in the neighborhood, he can use his psychic powers to force an enemy to turn around, thereby exposing his back to Rebound no matter where she is. Capes is full of teamwork and synergies like these. Adding attacks, buffs and debuffs can turn the tide of a battle, so leveraging them to their full advantage is the key to victory.

The campaign is a pleasantly appropriate length, featuring both main missions and side stories which the player is free to engage in (or not.) However, the EXP needed to level up heroes comes not just from completing missions, but also from performing special challenges within each mission — things like toss five enemies off ledges, disarm eight enemies, and so on. As such, players will want to engage in both side missions and bonus objectives to speed character growth. However, while doing these missions it becomes clear that level design is one place where Capes could use a bit of a boost.

Many of the levels take place where one would expect superheroes to battle — on streets, in a science lab, on rooftops and so forth. In general, most of these are interesting enough and fit the theme well. However, there are certain times when maps don’t hold up — either they felt too contrived and ‘gamey’ with spaces that didn’t make a lot of logical sense, or they held far too many enemies.

Part of this, I suspect, goes back to an initial version of Capes that had a more puzzle-like feel to skirmishes. The difficulty was steep, and each move had to be agonized over for maximum synergistic impact since even the smallest error could snowball into catastrophe. It was certainly different than most in the genre, but perhaps a bit too different.

Not long after that first version hit, the devs received player feedback and decided to make some major changes to the Capes formula. I can’t list all the tweaks and shifts here, but adding a wider array of difficulty levels, reducing the number of enemies and (ironically) pivoting towards more standard tactics combat was one of the bigger changes. Such a radical revamp must have been a huge undertaking for the team, but they made it happen and Capes was greatly improved by the changes.

While there are still a few levels that stick out as being annoying even after the patch, every aspect of the campaign is more manageable. The fights don’t feel as impossibly overwhelming, the EXP system has been reworked, and scenarios aren’t nearly as puzzle-like, giving players more room to make mistakes and experiment. These are all huge improvements. My only criticism of the current version is that some of my favorite levels were small and focused, sometimes only allowing one or two pre-selected characters. This narrower scope and emphasis on specific team compositions was welcome, offering challenges that I enjoyed. More exploration of characters in these small zones, both individually and in pre-assigned units, would have been welcome.

If I had written this review a few months ago, the result would have been quite different. The original version of Capes showed promise and potential, but was held back by aggressive difficulty and a lack of flexibility in its unusual, rocking-the-boat formula. However, I took it for an unpolished diamond and put it on hold while hoping for tweaks and patches that hadn’t been announced at that time. Now that it’s in much better shape, it’s home to the most interesting and enjoyable turn-based tactics this year.

Capes has loads of personality and offers a genuinely fresh experience thanks to new ideas in structure and an emphasis on characters and story. I absolutely loved the reworked and superior post-patch experience from start to finish, and have no problems recommending it to tactics fans craving something besides the usual medieval or military fare. My hat is off to the team for putting in what must have been a huge amount of work and ultimately saving the day — the effort was well worth it.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Spitfire Interactive and published by Daedalic Entertainment. It is currently available on PC, PS4/5 and XBO/X/S. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS5. Approximately 30 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode (10 hours pre-patch, 20 post-patch) and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Blood, Language and Violence. The T rating is well-earned, and I’d even say it should be older teens playing this one. There’s no sexual content but there is some salty language and lots of people do get explicitly killed, often including innocent civilians. There are a few scenes that are a bit intense, as well.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: All dialogue is voice-acted and subtitled. The subs cannot be altered or resized. there are no audio cues necessary for gameplay. This game is fully accessible.