A Tactical Future – Capes – Review

It’s probably bad form to start a review by directly comparing it to another game, but remember how people wanted Marvel Midnight Suns to be X-com with superpowers but were disappointed by random card pulls and small arenas? Well, Capes is here to save the day in a tactical turn-based combat with a team of superheroes.

Most of the heroes of King City have been wiped out by The Company but old-timer “Doc” is attempting to train up some young, new recruits, teaching them how to resist and survive. There are a lot of parallels with X-men; those with powers are stigmatised and oppressed; we have a team of kids from diverse backgrounds; and their power sets mirror certain mutants if you kind of squint a bit. Capes is certainly its own original creation but the inspiration is clear.

The character designs and backgrounds are definitely original, and the implementation of their powers is done really well with a unique take. Any X-men influence is clearly taken in love and respect. Although, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone had pitched this game as a licensed X-men project. The characters are generally well-written with consistent if tropey traits and they do develop as the story progresses.

The story hits a definite hope-punk vibe. Think Callisto 6 if you’ve heard of it, if not then think grim corporate-ruled near-future opposed by a surprisingly human and wholesome resistance. Think Cyberpunk but there’s something worth fighting for.

You’ll slowly recruit more heroes to your cause as you take down key members of The Company. Each one has a unique skill try, although it’s not super branchy. Each character has a specific role and consistent theming and synergistic abilities to give you more flexible, more powerful options if you’re near a teammate. Your teleporter can blink your telekinetic across the field to get into position and instead of using up their movement they can concentrate and get an extra attack off this turn. Others let you add damage or knockback to attacks and more.

Each character also has a specific way to charge their ultimate abilities; pull off backstab attacks, absorb damage, that kind of thing. It’s best to play with these in mind as they can really swing the tide of battle. And you’ll want every advantage you can get. Most enemies and heroes have less than six health points, bosses have more, and typically your standard attacks do less than three damage. You’ll also be ridiculously outnumbered with maybe 20 goons to your four heroes, the game will also throw another wave or a special enemy type at you just as you think you can scrape through without any casualties.

You can spend an action to bring a guy back from KO but they’ll have half the max HP. If you get KO’d with a max HP of one then you’re dead and will have to replay the mission or load your quicksave. I have to admit to save-scumming, especially when going for secondary objectives which are a key source of Skill Points used to unlock the skill tree.

There’s a nice gameplay loop of replaying missions for experience and skill points and using that to prepare for the next story mission. Finishing that mission stronger when you’re more familiar with your team and then using that to ace some of the secondary objectives you had no hope of the first time is really satisfying.

The gameplay is excellent, and the comic book stylised character designs used for out-of-mission dialogue are excellent and full of style. However, Capes has so many rough edges. It probably comes down to the development budget as there’s clear care and love put into the gameplay, world and characters. I’ve also not had any crashes or performance issues.

I do have gripes with some of the voice acting, generic interface and menus and the character models in cutscenes. I think the models might just be the gameplay models, but up close, they look ugly and dated. The animation also lends to them feeling like action figures – which wouldn’t have been a bad direction if it was intentional and reflected in the environments etc. I’ve got nothing bad to say about the music but nothing positive either. It’s a shame because there’s an excellent game here and I’m afraid people won’t look past its flaws.

With the AAA game industry apparently becoming unsustainable, these kinds of solid games that lack some bells and whistles are the future of gaming and are worth embracing with an open mind, even if the presentation isn’t what we’ve come to expect.