Star Wars Zero Company Review (PS5)

It's almost impossible not to mention XCOM when talking about Star Wars Zero Company, as the similarities are clear and manifold.

What developer Bit Reactor has done is apply a Star Wars veneer on top of the robust turn-based tactical gameplay from Firaxis' beloved series, and the result is a game that feels like a perfect alignment.

Lucasfilm's beloved sci-fi universe is a fantastic fit for turn-based strategy, it turns out, and in many ways, Zero Company is a very successful rendition — though it's far from perfect.

Set during the Clone Wars, you control a customisable main character named Hawks, leader of a motley crew of mercenary outcasts, taking any contract they can get to keep themselves afloat.

Unlike many other strategy titles, this game has a higher emphasis on characters and narrative, and it's an angle that sort of works and sort of doesn't.

I'm not really fussed about the overall story, for example. It's just not really got its hooks in me. Basically, there's a mysterious cult called the Coil that's infecting people with a strange disease caused by some creepy crawlies, and it seems to be some sort of hive mind situation.

It's a serviceable setup for a threat that evolves over the course of single missions as well as the story, but I found it difficult to get invested.

That's a shame, because the characters themselves are pretty good. Hawks is a good lead with his mixture of world-weariness and can-do attitude, and he's joined by the battle-hardened clone Trick, the loveable brute Kabb, and the human aristocrat Jae — who charges Zero Company with taking on the Coil.

That's just a few of them; you'll pick up several more characters throughout your journey, from Jedi to Mandalorians, and all the main cast are pretty well realised.

While you can hire more crew members yourself, they're not as interesting — though they interacted with the main lot in the hub far more than I was expecting.

Between missions, you'll be back at base, where you can walk around, talk to your crew, and get yourself organised for the next excursion.

You can upgrade your base with better facilities, edit and upgrade your team's loadouts, and improve your crew members via skill trees.

They can also be upgraded when their relationships with each other improve. When out on missions together, the bonds between characters will increase, and you can then select a mutual upgrade for the two people in question. It's a neat system that rewards interplay between teammates and keeping them alive.

Indeed, there's permadeath in Zero Company, even for the more authored characters. While I've yet to lose anybody (other than poor old Aurelio, doomed to always die in the tutorial), things can go south very fast if you aren't playing carefully.

As someone who hasn't played very many games like this, the difficulty feels a touch easy on Normal, though as mentioned, you still need to play properly; you can be overwhelmed by enemy numbers if you're not thinking strategically.

Zero Company really shines in its tactical gameplay. Usually controlling a team of four, you move and attack with each of them in turn, with limited action points used to do so. When you're happy with all your actions, you end your turn, and the enemy has its go before you regain control.

The game features a broad range of character classes, each with specialities and unique abilities that can complement each other in some really fun ways.

I made my Hawks a gunslinger, and he's perfect for taking down B1 battle droids. They go down easy, and his Quick Draw ability refunds an action point when it kills a target, meaning you can go to town on large groups of them.

When upgraded, gunslingers are also very good at getting critical hits. Kabb, who by default is classed as a scoundrel, has an ability called Easy Mark; this puts a mark on an enemy, which means Kabb will assist whoever next attacks them.

If Kabb's ally scores a critical hit, his assist will be guaranteed to also score a crit, making for a powerful combo with gunslinger characters.

That's just one example of the cool synergies you can find in Zero Company, and that's before you get into weapons and utility items that can bolster your team's capabilities even further.

It feels very robust and flexible, but it's not intimidating. The game finds a great balance here; it's not overcomplicating anything, but there's enough depth to its decision-making and tactical options that it feels rewarding and satisfying to play.

There's always a surplus of missions to choose from; it's impossible to do them all, so you have to literally pick your battles.

As well as the tactical missions, there are more passive operations, some of which require you to make the call on a dilemma. These can occasionally have an impact on character bonds, so while operations can sometimes feel a bit hollow, others have a tangible effect on your crew.

It's a very well put together game, all told; the Star Wars world fits the genre wonderfully, and it has some really fun systems in place that make it enjoyable whether you're a novice or veteran of turn-based strategy.

The main issue, unfortunately, is that the game is rough on PS5. I've been playing on a regular console, so can't speak to PS5 Pro, but Zero Company isn't particularly well optimised.

Whether playing on Quality or Performance mode, there are frame rate hiccups and stutters fairly frequently.

While the game broadly looks good, I noticed a fair amount of visual issues, like frequent texture pop-in, flickering shadows, and more.

It also suffers from some bugs, most notably a softlock that meant I had to restart a mission I was almost done with. There are also some long pauses between turns that make it feel like the game's barely holding it together.

These various problems make Zero Company harder to recommend, at least right now. I'm hopeful some of these things can be fixed with updates, because there's absolutely a game worth playing here.