Capes Review – Heroically Average

Back in May of this year, I created a review in progress for Capes. Back then, my issues with it ranged from horrid difficulty spikes in certain areas and a lack of options to take on challenges to fully unlock character ability upgrades. These issues can definitely be subjective, but it ended up driving me from the game due to how overwhelming it got in the second act. This is definitely not the intended experience that the developers would have wanted.

However, the game back then is still what it is today. But with a slew of quality-of-life features, new missions, and some difficulty adjustments I think that were sorely needed. It did ensure I was able to finish the game and enjoy the remainder of the experience. But even with a simple, yet excellently executed finale, I still struggled to see it through to that point, due to its many shortcomings narratively and mechanically.

Developer & Publisher // Spitfire Interactive, Daedalic Entertainment
Platforms // Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 4|5, Nintendo Switch, PC
MSRP & Release Date // $39.99, May 29th, 2024
Reviewed On // PC

The Tale of the Capes in King City

Capes is set in the metropolis of King City. Where you play as a group of superheroes called the Capes. They fight against an evil company known as just that, The Company. Your introduction to them kicks off from the beginning, where you play as the first few heroes from the Capes, saving citizens. It’s very standard stuff, and your introduction to one of its many villains becomes a consistent threat throughout the first act.

This is to say the opening act of the game is very good. The characters like Facet, and Rebound have a great dynamic that creates a very home-y feeling when going through each mission. But the more the roster is filled out, the more that feeling gets replaced with the very basic plot of every member of Capes tracking down various villains from The Company that creates a horrible slog of a second act. The writing does have a level of grit to it, and profanity that makes everyone feel like actual people. But it is not until the third act, which ends very quickly, that the writing’s more mature side shines.

Characters like Mercurial, end up becoming just like the villains the Capes hunt. It made me wish that the second act was grittier and more concise in that regard. As opposed to being bloated with filler and fixated on finding more heroes, I was happy with the dynamics that were being formed before characters like Ignis muddied the tone. Something about a fire-wielding streamer character never sat well with someone like WeatherVane who has a complete breakdown seeing what The Company does to people they capture. The tonal conflict is something I cannot explain fully due to major spoilers in the stories second act.

Suffice it to say, but Capes had a great opening and closing, but a baffling middle. With only its tactical gameplay to keep me engaged.

Super-bly Average Tactics Gameplay

Capes is an isometric tactical RPG. This means that it will be a turn-based experience from a top-down perspective. You will be able to see your turn order and plan out moves accordingly while ensuring that your characters’ position is not a detriment. Every character has a set amount of health and abilities, carving out distinct classes.

For example, Facet is a hulking tank with a lot of health but cannot move a lot. But he can encase enemies in crystals, and shield allies from a single hit every turn. Couple this with the nimble Rebound who teleport behind foes to deliver devastating backstabs. While also having a signature spinning move that can be used to deliver a good starting blow, attack normally, and then leave the area. This sounds basic, but other characters, like Ignis for example, can light the field aflame with various abilities. Then she can cast her ultimate to sweep away the flames and deal massive damage to enemies caught within it.

All character’s ultimate abilities feel great to use, and now most can be sped up to ensure you’re not trapped watching overly long animations for each one. Such as WeatherVane whose ultimate ability deals a good amount of damage to enemies in a wide area. This animation plays for a lot longer than some characters and the constant yelling from him still makes me feel uncomfortable, even when speeding the battle to make the animation go by quicker. But when it comes to the gameplay in Capes, there is nothing wrong with it, but it just does not stand out. Unlike the missions and bosses which some do for better, and for worse.

Hit and Miss Missions and Bosses in Capes

The mission structure and enemy designs for Capes are very hit-and-miss. You have your normal infiltration missions where you take down numerous foes. While some can be a little frustrating. Early on in the game, there is an optional stealth mission where you have to avoid being seen while getting information from a warehouse. Doing this in a turn-based tactics setting can be very annoying. Considering you will have to take a few turns to memorize the pattern, then slowly take out foes before moving on to the objective.

The problem here lies with the inconsistent AI. The fact that even if you do end up taking out enemies without alerting the others, the enemies will never notice that their companion is missing, even when walking near the place where it happened. It takes the edge off, as the reaction can create a more intense situation. But not having a form of reaction at all makes the stealth just feel optional. Other missions include protecting civilians from escalating threats which I really enjoyed and narrative beats that include some cool bosses, and other horrible ones.

One of the late-game bosses I really enjoyed fighting was a boss who could split himself apart when you hit him. This created scenarios where you had to use high damaging moves on him before switching to multi-targeted attacks. It’s a welcomed challenge that was presented in a really cool way. But one of the bosses before him felt imbalanced in comparison.

This boss’s appearance is in the middle of crowds of hostages and normal foes. He can send out the bolts that can mind control the masses, forcing them to attack you. Of course, you have to disarm them, while also handling the normal enemies and slowly chipping away at his health. This boss fight was just not fun at all. To the point that it originally made me put down the game. The boss reappears in different scenarios and is much easier to manage, but his debut is still frustratingly handled.

Nearly Flawless Performance and Middling Music

Playing on PC with an RX6600 GPU Ryzen 5 5600G CPU, 16 gigabytes of DDR4 RAM, and an m.2 NVME SSD, the experience of Capes was very smooth. I noticed some framerate drops when switching the settings from Ultra to Cinematic and found the visual differences were not worth the performance hit. But the game never crashed, froze, nor had any form of stuttering in my 18 hours of playing. The music on the other hand is either immemorable or only sticking out in my memory due to it being underwhelming hip-hop or techno tracks.

The art style and UI are also pretty serviceable. The only thing worth pointing out is how cool the comic book strip style of chat bubbles that appear when characters talk in cutscenes. As well as the cohesive skill trees for every character that make the decision-making for skills worth that extra step in every mission with the challenges.

Strangely enough, the art style for characters works better for their comic book portraits during dialogue sequences in the main hub, as opposed to their 3D models. The enemies and some of the bosses look really good, and the environments are great, but the overall style is extremely basic.

Various Difficulty Options and Challenges

There are a variety of difficulty options in Capes that allow you to have the experience you want. From the Hardcore difficulty of having instant game-overs when any of your characters go down. To the Casual mode that allows you to keep playing through each mission without the fear of death at all. My only problem with the modes is the naming conventions. It goes from easiest to hardest with: Casual, Easy, Normal, Challenging, and Hardcore. It’s a nitpick, changing the Casual name to something like Story, with Easy being called Casual would make it feel like the Casual option was not obviously added in a post-launch update.

Similarly, the new challenge options are handled weirdly. Originally, there was a set of challenges in each mission that ranged from standard stuff like no character deaths, to more minute stuff like disarming enemies or activating a certain number of ultimate abilities in the mission. Some of these challenges felt too specific to pull off. For example, if you did not get everything in one go you would miss the “All in One” bonus that made doing the challenges worth it for the extra skill points.

In a later update, they added an option to eliminate the bonus altogether and relegate the extra skill points to the challenges themselves. I liked this change, but I felt like it could have gone both ways. Have the more rewarding challenge system with a juicy all-in-one bonus if you want to max out character skill trees quicker. I love their approach to difficulty and challenge options, but some tweaks could have been made to make it feel more organic.

Final Thoughts on Capes

Capes is not an experience I can recommend. I liked most of the story, but the gameplay was very middling with missions and bosses that could either just be enjoyable, or straight-up frustrating or confusing. The game runs flawlessly, but there is so much stuff not up to par with what can be enjoyed by those who are not in a hardcore genre demographic. It just could not save the day in the ways I was hoping.

Final Score: 5.5/10

Note – A key was provided for the purpose of this review.

Pros:

• Mostly Enjoyable Story
• Some Cool Bosses and Enemies
• Flawless Technical Performance
• Great Difficulty and Challenge Options
• Unique Character Abilities

Cons:

• Horrible Second Act in the Story
• Middling Music
• Some Bad Boss Fights
• Underwhelming Stealth Missions
• Serviceable UI