14 DAY TRIAL // There have been quite a few games starring superheroes from both DC and Marvel universes, and more are just about to be released. Lately, I’ve been addicted to Marvel Snap, a game that perfectly caters to my thirst for deckbuilding and superheroes equally. That’s the main reason I can’t wait to play Marvel’s Midnight Suns, the game developed by the same team behind XCOM.
However, today I’ll be sharing my thoughts about Capes, a gritty superhero turn-based strategy RPG that hasn’t been released yet. I had the chance to play a demo of Capes and although I can’t say that I was impressed by the combat mechanics, I did dig the comics art style.
Capes reminds me a lot of XCOM: Chimera Squad, a smaller in scope and scale turn-based tactical combat experience in the XCOM universe. Developed by Spitfire Interactive, Capes doesn’t feature any of the superheroes we know and love so much since the studio wasn’t able to secure any licenses from the big companies owning them.
Although creating superheroes is a lot of work, not being tied by a franchise leaves room for creativity. All superheroes in Capes are original and have unique powers that inherently overlap with superheroes from either Marvel or DC universes.
Just like XCOM: Chimera Squad, Capes is played across a series of small missions with clear objectives, which allows you to unlock more heroes, earn skill points and complete various challenges. In between missions, you get to learn more about your heroes’ backgrounds, a trend that’s been popularized by the Fire Emblem series.
Capes is set in a dark future where the supervillains won. The new rulers have imposed their own laws where developing superpowers is a crime. You’re part of an organization that is actively searching for superheroes to protect and try to recruit them.
As you can imagine, the bread and butter of the game is the heroes’ unique powers and the synergies between them. I found that some these abilities are quite overpowered, while others are basically unusable, but that’s understandable considering that I’ve been playing a demo version of the game.
What I did like is that there are so many potential synergies between superheroes’ powers that’s impossible not to find the perfect combination suitable for every scenario. You can’t take more than four heroes with you in missions, but that’s enough to build a powerful party.
Although each comes with unique abilities, most superheroes have their own role to play in a party, such as tank, damage dealer or support/healer. This becomes obvious from the start and will become the foundation of creating a solid party.
More importantly, you’ll be able to upgrade each hero’s abilities, which should offer you even more synergy options. Skill points rewarded at the end of each mission are going into leveling up your heroes but completing hero specific challenges during missions not only earn you bonus skill points, but it can sometimes unlock optional missions for that specific hero.
Conclusion
Although I usually don’t play these types of games for the story, I confess that Capes got me interested in the first few hours. I hope it doesn’t fall flat later on, but even if it does, I’m still going to send my party to fight crime in a dystopian city that has no love for superheroes (unless they’re supervillains).
Review code was provided by the publisher.
