Published:
Our Verdict
Star Wars Zero Company is a worthy addition to the canon of great Star Wars videogames. While its tactical battles could serve to be more complex and varied, the triple-A polish enhances a thrilling narrative that’s begging to be replayed again and again.
When asked if I like Star Wars, I usually say I enjoy the 20th-century films and Andor, but that’s not strictly true. During my lifetime, Star Wars videogames have had a far more successful hit rate than the movies or TV shows, from underappreciated Doom clone Dark Forces to simulating space dogfights in Star Wars Squadrons. Battlefront 2 (both of them), the power fantasy of the Jedi games, I’ve even got a soft spot for the Force Unleashed duology. What I’m saying is, Star Wars Zero Company has big shoes to fill. And that’s before you get to its XCOM heritage.
Zero Company is XCOM but Star Wars. A creative collaboration between developers Bit Reactor (many of whom are ex-Firaxis) and Respawn, which made the well-received Star Wars Jedi games. Turn-based tactics with a triple-A glow-up. Chess with lightsabers and intergalactic gang warfare. Did I mention XCOM but Star Wars? But can Zero Company possibly live up to these Skywalker-high expectations?
My first thought when loading up Zero Company was, “this has no right to look that good.” That triple-A shine, presumably Respawn’s influence, makes a first impression like a Wampa fist to the nose, albeit a Wampa fist that you’re happy to see after a long time out in the cold. The positives keep flowing as you’re introduced to the turn-based combat through some simple missions.
The core loop will be familiar to anyone well-versed in XCOM and its progeny. You have your den-Zero Company’s base of operations-where you can talk to your operators, heal injuries, recruit new allies, and upgrade your stats, abilities, weapons, gear, outfits, and the den itself. Phew. You can also perform reconnaissance missions, called Operations, to increase Zero Company’s reputation. This in turn offers rewards like experience, credits, gear, or even temporary stat boosts to the members sent along.
There’s plenty of depth to the hub, but it never feels overwhelming. Despite juggling numerous currencies (credits, intel, capacitors, focus points, contacts, bonds, den experience, and more), everything is straightforward and loops together neatly. However, this simplification continues to the missions themselves, and that’s more of a problem.
Simplifying the between-combat bureaucracy is fine; that’s not what I play XCOM-likes for. But Zero Company’s missions are unfortunately too simple. I started on the recommended difficulty, normal, but quickly had to turn it up-and I wouldn’t consider myself a veteran of this genre. It’s fun finding combos to begin with, but the classes are poorly balanced, and I quickly reverted to the same four operatives on each mission, despite a roster of a dozen different space dudes.
Once you unlock a second class for your operatives, giving them all Scout makes every mission even easier, as you can so easily stack up Advantage to unleash devastating abilities multiple times a turn. Combine that with the fact that Zero Company often increases the difficulty simply by introducing more enemies means that spamming AoE attacks with your Bounty Hunter can end a supposed boss fight in a couple of turns like General Grievous attacking a flock of unsuspecting Shaak. When a team of Scouts is tactically preferable to bringing a bona fide Jedi along for each mission, you know something’s wrong.
On higher difficulties, the combat encounters become more fun, even if they continue to be a little samey. You see the same environments repeated from different angles, and it could use a few more different mission types thrown into the rotation-saving hostages and cracking safes get old when you see them every other mission. There’s no fog of war so you’re rarely surprised and, while there are a few cool moments like working out how to defeat your first Droideka, enemy AI regularly makes poor decisions.
The exception to this is the critical path. These missions are a welcome difficulty spike, as evil ne’er-do-wells the Coil have some tricks up their robed sleeves. They have a magical buff called Resonance which offers everything from revenge strikes to invisibility, and can transfer these buffs to one another upon death, meaning that the difficulty of encounters increases naturally as you go on if you’re not careful about who you eliminate and their positioning on the board.
Coil operatives also get upgraded as the game goes on. You’re faced with numerous branching paths which allow you to decide exactly how your opponents will be buffed going forwards, which adds a nice sense of agency and allows you to prepare strategies for beating heavily-armoured droids or Coil Captains with potent healing powers.
And, aside from utterly pointless third-person sections preluding missions which are presumably only there to show off, these central missions also offer more variety, adding interesting caveats or stipulations to proceedings. Buzz droids burn areas behind you, forcing you to run or else meet instant and permanent death. Speaking of which, I didn’t suffer a single death in my playthrough. Maybe that’s a sign I needed to increase the difficulty again, but I don’t think I would have cared if any of my operatives had kicked the camtono.
You have several pre-made characters in your operation. I found Trick, the ex-Clone Trooper, the most useful-sounding like Jason Statham was an added bonus. But if Trick had died, I would have mourned his battlefield role more than the soldier himself, and the same goes for any of your pre-made allies. Each has a couple of missions to flesh out their backstory, but lack any real characterisation to make you really care about them on a human (or otherwise) level.
The same goes for your random recruits. You can re-roll the recruitment console in your hub as many times as you like, customising everything about your soldiers from their clothes to their abilities, but without naming them after your friends or pets, why would you really care if they died? I liked my trusty party of four, but resources aren’t scarce enough that a replacement isn’t already standing in the shadows. If it was your dog taking a blaster shot to the brain, you’d feel differently, but you may as well enter missions with a group of clones for all I cared about one of my recruits meeting a permanent end.
Zero Company wouldn’t be a piece of Star Wars media without some cameos, which is unfortunately my biggest gripe with most TV shows: they always end with a Glup Shitto moment to tenuously connect the dots between disparate stories. To Zero Company’s credit, it tells its own, fresh story within the Clone Wars setting, and any cameos and references feel earned.
Despite its balance issues and repetitive missions, there’s a lot to love about Zero Company. I imagine its encounters are better enjoyed at a slower pace than I played them, and despite my issues, I’ve already started a run on the deadly Beskar difficulty. XCOM fans will want to crank up that difficulty slider and be willing to overlook some of the tactical flaws, but Star Wars fans will enjoy a fine addition to their collection.
