The Clone Wars is my favorite Star Wars era. The factions, politics, military aesthetics, clone troopers, Sith and Jedi on the field, the music, and a plethora of memorable characters and groups make it my most exciting era. Star Wars Zero Company relishes in all of that to an obsessive degree, with a deep tactics system holding the entire experience together. Without giving too much away, Zero Company had its hooks in me the moment I clicked New Game.

The Den and Its Misfits

Zero Company is the name of a freelance mercenary outfit led by Hawks, your main character, a former Republic officer making a living taking on jobs that require a professional touch. With a major debt owed to the Hutts hanging over their head, Hawks reluctantly accepts a risky but high-paying job that involves taking down a Separatist-aligned cult called the Infinite Coil. That’s the general premise of Zero Company, and while you aren’t restricted to just following the narrative around the Infinite Coil and its growing, largely undetected influence, they’re the main threat you’re concerned with.

Hawks can be fully customized, and regardless of what race or body type you go with, they’re a charismatic, cautious, and level-headed leader who actually cares about their crew, even if they know the odds of everyone returning are always uncertain. Hawks isn’t just in this for themselves, and it’s clear as the narrative progresses that they’re more than just a mercenary looking to make credits. They’re likable, and having a leader the crew actually trusts goes a long way toward keeping everyone happy.

I know Zero Company is developed by people who worked on XCOM and Midnight Suns, and it’s clear that they looked back on what people loved about those games and what needed work. For me, the Abbey portion of Midnight Suns, despite being an ambitious part of the game, simply took way too much time to get through and almost put the main tactics gameplay in the backseat. Instead of just abandoning that idea, Bit Reactor streamlined the downtime through the Den, your HQ.

Here, you’ll talk to your crew after missions, upgrade facilities, characters, and weapons, hire more operators, train, heal, and do all the usual stuff that’s involved enough to give the game some RPG elements without turning it into a full-fledged RPG. Your operators will often comment on the last mission, give you intel for the next one, and just talk about their personal and shared history with you. Sometimes you’ll get new operations simply by talking to your crew, and these interactions often lead into main missions. It’s all naturally woven together and gives you enough reason to stay in touch with everyone at the Den. It also helps that the Den isn’t a massive mansion that takes forever to traverse.

You can get around it in seconds, and going through every new potential upgrade or browsing new black market stock doesn’t take long. It’s unintrusive, but it gives each surviving character a chance to grow and lets you increase your bond with them, so when you potentially lose them, their absence is actually noticeable. This restraint keeps the non-combat downtime enjoyable without making it feel overbearing.

This Is Where the Fun Begins

Given the development pedigree involved, Zero Company plays a lot like XCOM, and that’s not a bad thing at all. People have been modding XCOM with Star Wars packs for years now, and to get an authentic Star Wars game with XCOM-like tactical gameplay, along with the production values needed to sell galaxy-jumping experiences, requires it to be more than just another XCOM game.

Combat encounters are turn-based, with a high focus on positioning, managing your AP, figuring out squad synergies, anticipating enemy attacks, and praying to the RNG gods that every incoming attack misses you. Levels have a lot of verticality, visible differences in cover integrity, and the meme of missing 95% chance shots is finally over because if you’re close enough to a target, you’ll get a 100% accuracy value. I have to admit, even seeing that 100% value wasn’t enough to convince me that the shot would indeed hit, and it took me a while to realize that the RNG evil had finally been defeated.

Positioning is particularly important because simply putting everyone behind cover and shooting isn’t always enough. Flanking, finding high ground, managing your AP, and knowing when to move into a more aggressive position can completely change how an encounter plays out. Overwatch is another important tool, especially when you can anticipate where enemies will move on their turn, but wasting an operator’s AP just to set up an unnecessary Overwatch can leave you without the resources needed to deal with a more immediate threat. The various objectives also keep encounters from becoming simple exercises in wiping out every enemy on the map, forcing you to think about how you approach each battlefield rather than relying on the same strategy every time.

Given the chosen era, enemies range from all sorts of clankers, battle droids, Separatists, and clone troopers. The Infinite Coil also brings its own unique synergy system, with Coil units able to receive boosts when other units are killed. It’s a fun, spontaneous aspect where you’re always guessing and dreading what bonus an enemy will get, and it’s often more tactically effective to bring enemies down to lower health and take them out faster.

One thing I really appreciate about the classes is that no one feels useless. Having a clone trooper like Trick on your squad is just as useful as a Jedi, because we all know that hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid. I know a lot of Star Wars media is dominated by Jedi, Sith, and the Force, but Zero Company’s focus on tactical gameplay means every crew member, regardless of their origin, gets a chance to shine. There’s nothing more satisfying than uppercutting an enemy brute with full health off a platform using Kabb and turning a major threat into dust if you’re careful.

The more enemies you damage per turn, the more advantage you gain, which allows operators, especially authored ones, to use devastating abilities that often do a lot of damage. For instance, Trick can pull out a rocket launcher and perform a high-AOE attack, damaging several enemies at once. But it’s a shared resource, so sometimes it’s better to choose other utility over raw damage. Figuring out what works best for a particular operator is important, especially when it comes to prioritizing upgrades. For instance, the Quickdraw ability for the Gunslinger class does very little damage, but it restores an AP point if the hit kills. Knowing that, I never finish off enemies with certain characters and instead leave them for Hawks, who happens to be the Gunslinger in my crew, to get tons of AP during each turn by finishing them off.

I do think that Zero Company might be a bit easy for XCOM veterans, and they should pick a higher difficulty from the get-go. For new players interested in the genre, however, the default difficulty is approachable and teaches the mechanics and strategies you need without feeling punishing. Sure, there’s always the lingering threat of permadeath over your head, but if you take your time with each turn and aren’t rushing into Overwatch position as the default strategy, there’s a lot you can do by simply ensuring your characters are in cover and using their abilities efficiently.

Also, getting downed doesn’t automatically mean the end of the world. You can always recover and heal your operator after a match, but getting downed enough times means death, and other than Hawks, it’s permanent, no matter how important the character is.

Presentation and Performance

I gushed over this already in my preview, but Zero Company is a Star Wars game first and foremost. It isn’t a tactics game wearing a cheap licensed Star Wars outfit; it’s taking you on a Star Wars adventure with all its details through a tactics layer. The costumes, aesthetics, curse words, politics, camera transitions, and ever-present music all scream authenticity. All the background chatter, news bits, locations, and dialogue wouldn’t feel out of place in a Clone Wars episode. Even the way the camera moves between exploration, dialogue, and combat helps sell the idea that you’re playing through a proper Star Wars adventure rather than simply moving units around a battlefield.

The same extends to the visuals and overall presentation. Zero Company has nailed the aesthetics of the Star Wars universe, particularly the Clone Wars era. Everything from the outfits to the planets you visit feels high quality and rendered with a lot of careful consideration. Blaster bolts, explosions, and Force effects feel right at home, and levels are often wide and intricately designed, with plenty of details to appreciate.

Often, especially during main missions, you’ll explore handcrafted levels that, despite being largely corridors, give you opportunities to gather intel and gain an advantage before combat starts. These sections are filled to the brim with small details that complement the planet they’re set on, and they’re a nice reprieve from the high-octane combat. They also give you a chance to see your operators outside of combat and reinforce the feeling that they’re part of a larger world.

Cutscenes share this quality as well and are well shot and acted, with plenty of moments for character performances to shine. The presentation does a particularly good job of making the transition from these quieter moments into explosive tactical encounters feel natural. One moment you’re walking through a detailed location and listening to your crew talk, and the next you’re watching the camera pull back as the battle begins. It’s a small thing, but it goes a long way toward making Zero Company feel like a complete Star Wars experience.

As much as I love everything about Zero Company, its technical state isn’t perfect. On PC, I noticed CPU usage is fairly high, even on my 5700X3D, which should be enough for at least a smooth 60 FPS experience. However, I still get stutters, random FPS drops, and I’ve even had a few crashes. Sometimes, the game wouldn’t go past the main menu until I restarted it, and other times, it would crash the moment an explosion happened.

The team assured me that many of these problems are being addressed in upcoming patches, and things have already improved during my playtime, so there is hope. It helps that this is a turn-based game, so performance issues aren’t too noticeable during combat, but it doesn’t run as smoothly as I hoped. Additionally, there is some mouse smoothing applied that I couldn’t turn off, and I hope an option to disable it is added down the line.

Verdict

Star Wars Zero Company is exactly the kind of genre shift Star Wars games have needed in years. It combines my favorite Star Wars era with a tactics system that is deeply rewarding, mechanically satisfying, and approachable. Bit Reactor clearly understands what makes the Clone Wars so special, and they’ve leveraged their experience with XCOM and Midnight Suns to create an experience that’s restrained in its downtime while understanding why people play these games in the first place. That authenticity extends to everything from the characters and politics to the music, visuals, outfits, and sheer amount of detail packed into every location. Some technical issues need addressing, particularly on PC, but they don’t take away from what is easily one of my favorite Star Wars experiences in years.