Star Wars: Zero Company, the newest game in the Star Wars universe, is finally here. A tactics based game set during the final days of the Clone Wars, developer Bit Reactor debuts their first studio game with help from Respawn Entertainment, the studio behind the recent Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order and Jedi Survivor. Does the space juggernaut work in a tactical setting, or did the studio go too big right off the bat? I’ll cover it all in my review, but the short answer is yes, it does work, with some big performance issues though.
The Premise
The setup going into Star Wars Zero Company is simple. You play as Hawks, a former member of the Republic Army who was dishonorably discharged after a mission went south. Hawks then goes on to form Zero Company, an independent mercenary outfit who does jobs for those willing to pay. Hawks is fully customizable, down to which race, features, class and outfit customization you want. Along with Hawks, you have Trick, a Clone Trooper who was part of Hawks former battalion, and a handful of other colorful characters that make up your unit on the battlefield, and your support in between missions.
Throughout the campaign, Zero Company comes across the Coil, a group who is aligned with the Separatist movement, and infects people will a plague that either kills them, or reforms them into joining the Coil. Throughout the 40ish hour long campaign, you’ll fight off droids, Coil soldiers, travel to familiar Star Wars planets, and even run into some surprises and familiar faces. The story was engaging and I really was into each of the main characters backstories, and what they thought of the current situations. As much as I want to dive further into the gameplay and characters more, I need to get the negative out of the way first.
Some Of The Worst Performance I’ve Seen
Star Wars Zero Company, or ZCOM as the community has referred to it as, has some of the worst optimization I’ve seen in a game since Halo The Master Chief Collection launched back in 2014. Stuttering during cutscenes, camera angles going into the geometry whenever someone makes a move, and plenty of other hiccups plague the game the whole time I spent on my 34 hour playthrough.
The worst was the constant crashing. Throughout the first 15 hours or so I had half a dozen crashes, centered mainly around being in a mission. Most crashes were during the start so I didn’t lose too much precious time, but I had one near the end of a side mission where I was 16 minutes in and had one more operator I needed to extract. There was a patch released on September 9th that has fixed the crashing issue for me, however it did not address all the issues.
Another problem I ran into even up to the final mission with the game is the game getting stuck on thinking what it needs to do next. What I mean by this, is that you or an enemy would take an action, and when it transitions to the next unit, the game would sit there, like it needed time to process what action it was going to take. This was a constant issue, however generally the game would resolve itself after about 4-10 seconds. A few times however, it did not resolve, and would force you to have to restart the mission. This wasn’t the game freezing in the way you typically think of when a game gets frozen, as the animations and background shooting was still going on every few seconds.
I only had this happen to me twice: once during the first few turns on a side mission, where Jae finished off a Battle Droid, and the game never left her perspective and wouldn’t allow me to make another move. The second case was during the 2nd battle of the last mission, where I had spent an hour taking down the boss, had 2 enemies left, killed one, and only needed one more turn to win. The game thought that the enemy I had just killed still needed to take a turn and would try to shift the focus onto that units lifeless body. I ended up having to restart that whole fight, thankfully with the knowledge of where and when enemies would now be reinforcing from, so there is a good angle to look at it I suppose. But in a year where so many great and optimized games are releasing and fighting for your time, performance like this is unacceptable.
While those are the main issues, there were plenty more smaller things that would routinely ruin the experience. Enemies getting stuck in their animations, causing them to just slide around the map whenever they moved. I had Hawks get stuck in a shooting animation looking to his right, so even when I was shooting an enemy in front of me, he’d be looking and firing to the right. The enemy still took damage so it wasn’t a huge issue, but it takes you out of the experience.
The Stars of Zero Company Are The Companions
Outside of making Hawks customizable to how you want them, you’ll end up with six other companions that are central to the story that takes place. You have Trick, the Clone who was also discharged from your old battlalion. Trick is incredibly likable right off the bat, and just as well written and voice acted as any of the Clones that have popped up in any of the animated shows since Star Wars: The Clone Wars debut. Then you meet others, such as Jae, a Baroness, Kabb an ex boxer. Later on you get Tel-Rea, a Jedi Padiwan who’s master was killed by the Coil, and Cly, a mandalorian. Lastly is Luco, an Umbaran that was on the other side of the war and joins Zero Company to take down a common enemy.
Each character has their own reason for joining Hawks, and by the end of the game I came to care for each and every one of them and tried to keep them out of danger as much as I can. Every companion also has their own unique questline that you can choose to help out with or not. These quests are typically broken down into 3 missions, and are a nice break from the main plot and the Coil. Both Jae and Tel had wonderful quests throughout the game that made me look forward to the next part of it. And Tel has a giant surprise in hers that I won’t spoil, but it is definitely worth going down that path if you’re a fan of other Star Wars media.
You also slowly build up bonds with each member of Zero Company, which provides gameplay bonuses. When leveling up, you’re given 3 separate choices of the kind of bonus it gives. You can get more damage, more bond points between the two characters, as well as more HP. This creates a good system where you want to focus on making bonds between all the characters, as these passive effects apply, even if one of the characters is not brought along for that mission.
There’s also ways to increase bonds on the battlefield. Every turn someone will be able to ask for support, where you choose another character to help you damage an enemy. Other ways to increase bonds are rallying a teammate, where when someone is down you head over to pick them up. There’s lots of ways to contribute bond points, and its a wonderful system to have in the game.
Wonderful Tactical Gameplay
The gameplay is another aspect that I need to praise. Coming into ZCOM, my only major experience with tactics games has been the Fire Emblem series, which is a very different style of game. I had played a little bit of Gears Tactics when it launched which is kind of similar, but having no experience with XCOM, I was going into this game mostly blind. Thankfully, the game does a great job onboarding you on what you need to know.
Most missions generally involve bringing along 4 operators. Main missions will require Hawks to come, and certain side missions will obviously require whichever character it is centered around. Outside of those regulations, you’re free to bring along whoever. As I learned how each character plays and what they excel at, I started making lineups that benefit each other well. Each character also gets 3 AP every turn, or action points. Each action you can take varies on how many AP you use, so the game really makes you think on how you want to handle it. Luco for example is a sharpshooter, and his main attack costs 2 AP to use, so you aren’t able to move him long distances and still be able to attack, which caused me to really try to figure out a good place for him to bunker down in, therefore not wasting precious AP that could be used for his attacks.
Another added system is advantage. As you do attacks with your operators, you build up advantage from 1 to 10, and that advantage gives you separate abilities that don’t require using up AP. Gunslinger Hawks had an ability to give another operator another AP point for 4 advantage. Cly the Mandalorian has an ability that allows her to jetpack around the map for 2 advantage points. The wonderful system here is you can use this as many times as you want, provided you have the points for it. I routinely had Cly fly to an enemy and punch them, and fly to another one to shoot them, and finally fly to a 3rd enemy to setup overwatch. The system really granted a lot of possibilities and got me out of situations I would not have been able to just going off the limited AP you have at your disposal.
Choices, Choices, Choices
Outside of battle, there’s a lot more decision making than I was expecting. The main source of choices will be at the holotable. You have a limited amount of Intel you have per cycle, and certain operations can expire in a number of turns. You’ll need to decide which operation and the rewards you can get are more important to you. One cycle I had two different companion quests that both expired within the next cycle, so I had to decide which member mattered more to me and who’s mission I wanted to see through.
There also are missions tied to the Infinite Coil, giving you a choice of two different missions you have to pick between, with whatever mission you don’t choose providing a permanent buff to the Coil forces. I found this both stressful and an interesting mechanic, as there wasn’t always a clear choice on which buff needed to be canceled out by completing missions. There were lots of different choices that needed to be made, and this does make me look forward to making different choices whenever I start my next playthrough.
The Infinite Coil
The Infinite Coil is the main antagonizing group in ZCOM, and I’ve got mixed feelings on them. As a Separatist aligned group, they serve as the foil to the Republic aligned Zero Company. Led by Fathom, members are “infected” and then connected up to other infected.
This makes for an interesting gameplay mechanic, because as you damage and defeat Coil enemies, their infection is transferred to another member upon death, known as resonance. This resonance builds up and gives new boosts to enemies, such as being able to heal with surge, giving them retaliation which allows them to fight back after being damaged, as well as other abilities, such as being able to go invisible, sending out a shockwave upon death, and others. This mechanic really made me think about how to tackle which enemies to target and focus on, knowing they’re going to pass off abilities to the closest enemy.
Outside of gameplay I really didn’t find the Coil interesting. Fathom shows up during early game cutscenes one or two times, attempts to kill you around the halfway point, and then you don’t see her again until the end of the game. Having her sprinkled throughout the game more would have been nice, as there’s no buildup for her on feats or backstory on why she is the leader of the Coil. And while this might be the Star Wars fan in me, with them being aligned with the Separatists, I can’t see Count Dooku or General Grievous going along with Fathom’s plan and allowing the Coil to operate as they did.
Final Thoughts
As a big fan of both Star Wars and tactics based games, Star Wars Zero Company hits all the right notes. The tactics gameplay is expansive and wonderful, the story and characters are expressive and absolutely fit into the world that George Lucas wrote almost 50 years ago. If I was to just give a score off those two elements, I’m sitting right around a 9. But with all the crashing, hiccups and bugs throughout my 30-40 hour playthrough, it’s hard to recommend that people spend the full price on this game currently. It’s something I will not be going back to until all these issues are ironed out.
Thank you to Bit Reactor and EA for providing review code to Gamer Social Club.
Star Wars Zero Company was reviewed on Xbox Series X.
Star Wars Zero Company is now available for Xbox Series S/X, PlayStation 5 and PC.
Star Wars Zero Company was the September game of the month over at the Gamer Social Club. Head on over to join in on Octobers game of the month.
