Capes Review
It’s probably the funniest joke in Capes – which has a lot of pretty good superhero jokes – that not one of your eight playable characters actually wears a cape. This clever and challenging turn-based tactical game does wear its heart on its sleeve, though, and a clear love of the comics that inspired it comes across as it makes its underdog vigilante squad feel powerful with creative combo mechanics. It’s a style of battle that gives you almost all the information and lets you execute a surefire plan in a way that reminds me of Into the Breach more than it does XCOM.
Every level is a tactical puzzle that tells you almost everything that’s going to happen next turn up front, and winning is all about countering the enemy’s moves before they can damage you by either taking them down, disarming them, or moving them right where you want them. Only a handful of abilities have randomized effects and there’s no chance to miss, plus you can see any enemy’s abilities and a timeline of who will get to move next. In short, you have all the information you need to succeed. I do wish it went a little further and told us specifically which target an enemy plans to attack and with what to take the last of the guesswork out of figuring out how best to thwart them, but once you understand that they’ll always go after the closest target (unless otherwise specified), it’s rare that you’ll be surprised by how a turn plays out if you’ve taken the time to read the room. Sometimes that can take a minute when there are literally 25 characters in the turn order list and you have to go through each one every turn to make certain your almost-dead character isn’t in the line of fire.
Capes’ tongue-in-cheek story grew on me fairly quickly – and when I heard that Morgan Jaffit, a writer who’d worked on the excellent Freedom Force games was involved, it made perfect sense. Sure, we’ve seen about 300 off-brand versions of the iconic Marvel and DC heroes at this point (everything from The Boys to
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