Capes, the latest addition from Spitfire Interactive, joins the realm of superhero RTS games. The landscape isn’t exactly bustling, with notable titles like Freedom Force on PC marking its origins. However, nestled between these two game types lies a surprising gem of a genre, one that, if executed well, can rival the excitement of other superhero games. So, if you, like me, felt the sting of disappointment when Marvel’s Midnight Suns for Switch met its demise, fear not. For the Switch now boasts not only the acclaimed Sentinels of Freedom but also Capes.
Capes is set in a dystopian future city in which the super villains have won. Twenty years later, superpowers are illegal and anyone displaying powers is systematically hunted down and disappears without a trace. But it’s time for new heroes to rise, to save their dystopian, cyberpunk-ish city by saving and recruiting one super at a time.
Capes goes heavy on its graphic novel and comic book inspirations. From the presentation to the tropes inherent in the genre, Capes has it all and uses it to tell an interesting story. The game features full voice acting for its characters and many of the fully animated cut scenes capture the panels of a comic book quite nicely, with speech bubbles popping up every time a character speaks.
The story might be a little too familiar in its tropes with a dystopian city and an oppressed minority. In many ways you’ve seen, or read, it all before, but Capes still manages to put its own voice on the genre. It doesn’t hurt either that the videogame is aimed more at the adult market, though if you’re aiming at letting someone younger play it, you can turn off the games profanity in the options, though not the bloody visuals in certain scenes.
Capes visuals are a bit of a mixed bag though. The environment designs, specifically for the city scenes are good looking, as are the character models for the main characters. Citizen NPC’s fare a little worse in their visual design, been low poly and, oftentimes, looking a little on the bizarre side. Character animation is also a mixed bag. In combat the animations are quite good, especially for the hero shots when ultimate abilities are used, but feature some odd looking poses and animations during cut scenes.
Each hero has their own backstory as well, which you’ll get to explore in their own missions as the campaign progresses, adding depth to their characters and keeping them from been nothing more than traditional classes to use.
Capes meat is, of course, the gameplay. And here it absolutely shines. Across the campaign you’ll rescue and unlock various heroes, each with their own abilities and attacks such as super speed, teleportation and the like. As each hero levels up, new abilities along with stat upgrades to existing ones come into play. But it’s the synergy between heroes that really adds a serious amount of depth to the game and is essential for coming out on top. Heroes can perform team up attacks with other heroes that both increases the damage of the attack while allowing you to bypass certain limitations of the base ability.
Facet, who functions as the tank, can grow crystals to block off areas, cover heroes in crystal to take extra damage or stop enemies in their tracks for a turn. Pair his abilities with resident telepathic telekinetic, Mindfire, and Facets crystals can be thrown by Mindfire to deal extra damage, while Mindfire and Rebounds team-up attack lets Mindfire distract an enemy so that Rebound can use a teleporting backstab attack to deal massive damage. As your roster grows, so too do the defensive and offensive options at your disposal.
And you’re going to need them because, even at its easiest setting, Capes is pretty tough. It’s easy for a mission that looks like it’s going your way to suddenly go south because you weren’t paying attention or didn’t deal with the most likely threats first. Assessing the situation and planning is the key to success and Capes does a great job of getting you to think about the battlefield around you and how to exploit your abilities and the environment to win. If you aren’t prepared to work-out the grey matter a bit, you’re going to lose.
To help deal with the escalating difficulty, heroes can be levelled up and new skills unlocked. Each level up seems to add to the base stats but you need to unlock new skills with a pooled skill point system. Skill points are awarded in a variety of ways. The most obvious is completing missions, which have a set amount of points for doing so while mission sub-objectives also award you with skill points for completing them. Each hero also has a set of challenges, such as using specific attacks so many times which, when completed, also give you more skill points.
Skills are quite expensive to unlock and level up so you will have to make sure you accomplish all of a missions objectives if you want to stay competitive. Missions are broken down into three categories: Story, Patrols and Simulation. Story continues the campaign, while Patrols allow you to level up or experience a hero’s side story. Simulation is the ability to replay every mission you’ve completed to further level your characters and grab the skill points you might have missed on sub-objectives.
The interface is also well thought out, though on the Switch Lite’s smaller screen it can get a bit crowded and difficult to tell who’s who when the enemies pile onto the screen in some of the smaller arenas.
Capes tells a fun and interesting, if not original story, set in the world of superpowered people. Of more significance is that it takes a big swing with its tactical turn-based gameplay and hits it out of the park. Fans of the strategy genre should not give it a miss.
Capes – Launch Trailer | Out Now on PC and Consoles!
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