I do like a good turn-based strategy game. Not too long back, I reviewed Classified: France ’44 and I really enjoyed it too. My love for the genre stems from the many hours I put into the original XCOM games 30 years ago. Developer Spitfire Interactive and publisher Daedalic Entertainment have decided to put a superhero slant on the idea with Capes.

“Capes is a turn based superhero strategy game where you build a team of heroes and fight to take back the city. Played across a series of campaign and patrol missions, choose to push forward with the story or take the time to explore the side missions and unlock more heroes, earn skill points and complete challenges, and learn more about your heroes lives.”

Let me get the basic plot out of the way first. Capes takes place in King City, where the good guys have already lost. Being a superhero is outlawed after a militant group known as The Company took control. However, there is a small resistance of heroes, led by an old-timey veteran called Doctrine, who is leading the charge to uncover exactly who The Company are and to try and put an end to their anti-superhero regime. This really is nothing more than a good vs evil plot, but honestly, that’s all that you really need here.

Capes plays very much like any other turn-based strategy game that you may have experienced. You move a team of heroes around a map using action points. You have limited action points and so, you have to think and plan your moves carefully as you try to complete your mission. You start with just the two superheroes, but will soon be adding to that line-up as you progress through the story. Each character is a parody/homage to recognisable superheroes in a non-copyright infringing way. There’s a Hulk-like brute, a speedy Flash-inspired character and more.

As you complete missions, you’ll earn experience and skill points that you can use to level up and learn new skills. Along with the main objective, the missions have a set of side-goals to aim for, though you won’t be able to get all of these on your first playthrough. You’ll definitely need to come back and replay the missions when you have some new characters and skills to get all of those lovely skill points.

The combat in the game is pretty standard stuff for a turn-based title like this. Each character’s action points are split into movement, abilities and ultimates. Movement is pretty self-explanatory. Abilities are your basic attacks and each character has specific attacks based on the type of hero they are. The ultimates are each of the chartacters’ big move that needs to be charged up first. How they are charged up depends on the character. The brutish Hulk-like character charges his up by being damaged, the stealthy teleporting character charges up her ultimate by getting in sneaky backstabbing attacks. While dealing with the standard goons is fun, they never really offer up much of a challenge, but the boss fights are a different story and they can be really interesting.

Around £33 is how much coin Capes is going to set you back. This one is a lot of fun, but I think that it could be a bit too easy if you’re a turn-based aficionado. You see, there is no random aspect with Capes. Usually with a title like this, the maps are randomly generated, so you never know what you are getting. Here, they are all predetermined. Plus, there is no RNG with the attacks. With something like XCOM, there is a % that you will or won’t connect with an attack. With Capes, every attack is a 100% guaranteed hit. This does take a bit of the strategy away and completing missions really becomes more like solving a puzzle of knowing when to move/attack with which character, as opposed to it being strategy-based. Even so, Capes is still a lot of fun and I think it works great as an introduction to turn-based games if you are new to the genre. Available now for all the consoles and on Steam.