Star Wars Zero Company Is Turn-Based Tactical Greatness (Review)

Star Wars Zero Company has been on my radar since I found out the former team at Firaxis Games was working on it. I’m a huge fan of the XCOM franchise and thoroughly enjoyed Gears Tactics, so the idea of a turn-based tactics game taking place in a galaxy far, far away sounded like a damn near perfect combination to me.

After spending the last several days and countless hours playing through Star Wars Zero Company, I’m happy to say that this game is exactly what I hoped for and so much more. Here are more details on this game, my thoughts on the overall experience, and why XCOM and Star Wars fans should check it out as soon as possible.

An Action-Packed Storyline

Star Wars Zero Company is a single-player turn-based tactics game developed by Bit Reactor in collaboration with Respawn Entertainment and Lucasfilm Games, and published by Electronic Arts. Set during the Clone Wars era, the story revolves around former Republic officer turned Zero Company Leader Hawks, who must recruit a group of misfits and mercenaries to deal with emerging threats throughout the galaxy. Hawks’ first name, gender, appearance, and voice can be customized, which is precisely why I tried to make my Hawks look like a relative of Lando Calrissian for my playthrough.

From a narrative standpoint, Star Wars Zero Company features several familiar themes and conflicts you’ve seen in other Star Wars projects. As a leader, Hawks has to make many key decisions that impact relationships with how other colony zones and even his or her own teammates view him or her. Bonds can be strengthened or weakened depending on your actions, which aligns with how any leader would operate in the real world today. Fans can expect a compelling storyline with plenty of lore, memorable characters, and moments that make this an exciting experience.

Engrossing Visuals

Star Wars Zero Company looks about as polished as you would expect from a top-down perspective turn-based tactical game. On certain missions, you can explore the area with your crew on foot before encountering enemies, which showcases even more of the design work.

The responsive character models and detailed environments you play throughout really capture the essence of what it means to live in this unique world. The cutscenes and smooth transitions from one scene to the next also follow the same presentation style we have seen in other Star Wars movies, TV shows, and video games.

I reviewed this game on my Xbox Series X console. I experienced a few minor performance issues, like occasional frame rate drops and slow loading right before an intense action sequence on the battlefield. These issues occurred before I downloaded the Day 0 patch, and I haven’t had any other problems since then.

With constant character movement and real-time animations, it’s expected that things can get clunky at times. However, these moments didn’t detract from my overall experience and actually reminded me of the fun I had playing the previous XCOM games. If you’re planning to play on PC, I’m sure you’ll have the best experience, but consoles are equally enjoyable from everything I’ve seen so far.

Addictive Gamplay

The heart and soul of Star Wars Zero Company lies within its addictive tactical gameplay loop both on and off the battlefield. While in the field, you have to think strategically about how to use your action points across your squad to secure victory. Every mission starts with a briefing on the key goals and objectives, along with an option for you to choose your teammates and loadouts. Some story-based and side missions require you to use specific teammates, which builds your bond with them.

As you progress through the story, different types of operators can join your team. There are also different types of missions like rescuing important targets and sabotaging or stealing enemy goods. You and your teammates can sustain injuries and go down at any time. Using action points to rally a downed ally is optional, but you still have to stay aware of your surroundings and how vulnerable you’ll be to your opponents. As the battle begins, you’ll gain or lose advantage points based on your performance, and you can use them to pull off more lethal attacks

This is when Permadeath comes into play, forcing you to think critically about your decisions and the consequences of losing a teammate you’ve been building up. At the end of every mission, you receive credits, upgrade points, a list of the characters who sustained injuries or died, and updated stats on your current bonding level with your remaining peers.

When you aren’t busy doing field missions, you’ll spend most of your time in the Den, your central home base of operations. This area has several facilities, including an Armory for weapons, a Personell section to manage and customize your roster, a Recruitment Center to hire new operators, a Medbay to help injured allies recover, a Memorial section to pay tribute to fallen comrades, and a pit area where you can engage in meaningful and optional conversations with your team.

The Holotable is also where you’ll spend most of your time selecting tactical missions and making key decisions about various operations across the galaxy. These operations are directly tied to what I mentioned earlier about making choices that can impact how other view you so choose wisely.

Rounding out the presentation and overall quality of this game is the phenomenal voice acting, musical score, and sound design. Everything sounds authentic for what you would expect from a Star Wars game and the actors really add an extra layer of emotion to the characters they are portraying, which makes the world and the events you go through feel even more immersive.

The standard edition of Star Wars Zero Company costs $59.99 on consoles and $49.99 on PC. The Digital Deluxe edition costs an addition $10.00 on both platforms. Considering everything you get with this package, I would say this is well worth the price of admission and guaranteed to keep you playing for a long time.

Final Verdict

If you can’t tell by now, I really enjoyed my time with Star Wars Zero Company and I believe you will too. Bit Reactor has set a new standard on what to expect from an XCOM stylized Star Wars game, proving that the force is strong with their vision and goals. Please let us know if you plan on checking out the game when it launches on August 27th for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.

This review was based on a review copy of Star Wars Zero Company for the Xbox Series X provided by EA and Bit Reactor.