To unfairly summarise Star Wars Zero Company, it is XCOM with a Star Wars skin. This reductive assessment, however, neglects Zero Company’s lean toward story, and the overall polish of a product that genuinely builds on XCOM’s foundations.
Mechanically, I was surprised how similar to XCOM the game is, right down to the UI. The moment-to-moment gameplay will be immediately familiar to fans of the tactics gene and XCOM in particular. Operators run around the map, take cover, shoot, assume overwatch position, throw grenades and deploy a variety of other tools to outsmart and outshoot their opponents.
The game overall is a strong package: beautiful, varied visuals connect with an addictively flowing gameplay loop. The pleasure of setting up tactical traps for your enemies never gets old, and on victory you are returned to a hub in which you can choose and purchase meaningful (particularly in the early game) upgrades for your next adventure. I think Zero Company deserves particular praise for its “Star-Wars-ness”, an intangible quality that various media have had varied success in capturing: flawed but likeable characters swashbuckling across the galaxy against a backdrop of larger melodrama.
The story follows a politically-neutral group of mercenaries toward the end of The Clone Wars, who take whatever jobs they can get to pay the bills. They are pulled into a Republic plot to foil a Separatist ploy to use a disease against the republic, and action, drama, comedy and betrayal flow from there. Some aspects feel a little rushed here and there, some resolutions unearned, but it works well, is enjoyable and thematically consistent.
Zero Company ties the in-game operators that do the running and shooting into the narrative in a manner that XCOM never did, and this raises some new benefits and disadvantages. The pros are that Zero Company integrates story into the gameplay in cool and meaningful ways. Without resorting to blatant spoilers, just at the point when you have become comfortable with the play and feel of your operators, a powerful Jedi is dropped into your team. They are only present for part of one mission, but completely blow the rest of your operators out of the water. You really feel the strength of the character. There are more impactful examples later in the story that I don’t want to spoil, but suffice it to say that a particular betrayal is sown into the gameplay in a neat and innovative way.
On the other hand, some problems emerge from this integration. For instance, it confuses your choice of Operator for missions. You are given more than enough “main characters” with individual stories and side missions that you would never need to choose one of the randomised recruits – so why are the randomised recruits there? It kind of felt like they were there because they were in XCOM. Additionally, who should I take on the next mission? The heroes that are the strongest and least likely to get everyone killed? Or the ones that make most narrative sense? Perhaps these were choices developer Bitreactor wanted players to make, but it didn’t sit well with my desire for tactical purity.
I was most impressed with this game in its first act, when things were still a little chaotic and I didn’t have the technique nailed down. There was more risk and higher stakes. Operators actually got knocked down (which incidentally forces you to use other characters while the injured party “spends a cycle in the med bay”). As the in-game “cycles” (days) wore on, a bit of the novelty and sheen wore off and repetition set in.
While it never gets old setting up a complex chain of moves allowing you to clear most of your enemies in a single turn, the fact remains that after about 15 hours you are simply repeating the same procedures with incrementally improved efficacy. This is exacerbated because the systems encourage you to stick with the same operators since this is how you improve their “bond” – the main upgrade system in the game. I feel there should have been an alternative system that gives more XP-equivalent for switching up your operators and varying your methods.
(Having looked on reddit it appears that there are some benefits to switching up your squad, but they are only meaningful on the very highest difficulty)
I played the game on Hard, and it really was too easy. Once I was through the first act there was very little jeopardy. The game has a knockout system, from which a character can be easily revived by any other – but the third knockout is an automatic kill. However, I didn’t see a single knockout in the last 20 hours of the game, and had zero permadeaths at all. In the final few hours I didn’t even need to think about cover because by Operators took such little damage from a shot to the face. I defeated the final boss in a single turn.
I am also obliged to mention the performance issues that I experienced, primarily in the form of crashes to the PS5 home screen. These were not enough to completely write off the game, but were certainly an irritation. At one point I thought my whole save file had been lost, but with the help of Sony Support I was actually able to recover it.
Mostly, my criticisms are minimal and nitpicky. Overall this is a great package and a wonderful modern spin on the XCOM formula. The visuals, story, mechanics and upgrade system mesh together into a characterful, flowing piece of the Star Wars universe.
JH 