STAR WARS Zero Company is the best STAR WARS game I’ve played in modern times. While the Jedi games and Battlefront 2 are fantastic in their own right, there’s just something special about Zero Company that had me hooked.
A cracker story, engaging characters, and addictive strategic combat make it a force to behold; it’s only let down by a flurry of technical issues.
Zero Company
Set within my favourite era of STAR WARS, the Clone Wars, the game tells the story of Zero Company, an elite mercenary group led by ex-republic captain Tesh Hawks.
The group are contracted by the Republic to investigate the Infinite Coil, a paramilitary cult spreading throughout the system; a job they begrudgingly take out of a desperate need of credits. The stakes rise significantly when it’s discovered the cult is brainwashing people and turning them into super-soldiers, and alliances get dicey when politics come into play. To say much more would spoil a fantastic story, but there are plenty of emotional moments and unexpected twists right through to the end of the game.
It might sound a little cliché, but Zero Company is made up of a rag-tag assortment of characters from around the galaxy. Criminals, ex-soldiers, bounty hunters… Even a padawan that refuses to return to the Jedi until she’s finished her late masters mission.
The side stories of the crew supplement the main plot, but are by no means lesser. Whether you’re helping out Trick’s fellow Clone troopers or hunting down Mandalorian traitors with Cly, the side content is top notch. While many of the missions are optional, you’d be doing yourself a disservice by skipping them.
Strategic Scuffles
STAR WARS Zero Company is a turn-based tactical RPG. You move each squad member around an isometric map like chess pieces. Positioning is key, as the further you are from an enemy or if they’re behind cover, the harder they are to hit.
Each turn your operators get action points, which can be spent on movement, attack, or defense. Some actions cost more AP or get more powerful the more AP you put into them. There are some ways to get extra AP during battle, or move AP between operators, but for the most part each operator will have three AP.
One of the most useful actions is Overwatch, where your operator readies themself to ambush an enemy who enters their cone of vision, often stopping enemies dead in their tracks and ending their turn before they have a chance to attack.
Whenever you hit an enemy with an attack, you gain a stack of advantage, which is used to activate special abilities. The coolest moves are unleashed this way, like blaster barrages, lightsaber throws, or jumping around the battlefield with a jetpack. Grenades are super effective in building advantage as every enemy you hit in blast radius will give you an individual stack.
Combat can feel a little repetitive at first: reposition, hide behind cover, shoot, repeat. But outfitting and upgrading your operators (or recruiting new ones) adds a lot more options to the table: grenades, flamethrowers, force pushes etc.
Terrain is also used to your advantage; blowing up generators and explosive barrels can leave enemies electrocuted or burning, while knocking even the strongest of enemies into a pit can be an instakill!
You can tailor your operator line-up depending on how you want to tackle a scenario. You might want to go in hot with two heavy gunners at the front, or take a more careful approach, using snipers behind cover. Different missions also have different goals; you may need to wipe out an enemy force, hack a terminal, or rescue an imprisoned ally. Often you’ll need to get in, complete your task and extract quickly before waves of reinforcements overwhelm you!
There’s more of a danger to combat than simply losing the mission; if an operator drops to 0 HP they will go down and suffer an injury. Another character can get them back on their feet, but the injury will remain until they can heal in the med-bay. Suffering multiple injuries in the same battle can result in death, and if you’re playing with perma-death turned, they’re gone for good. Having said that, on normal difficulty, it was rare that I’d gain more than one injury on an operator per combat encounter, and I never actually had any of them die.
The Den
Between missions you’ll regroup at ‘The Den’, a hub area where you can plan your next moves. The med bay lets you heal injured operators while you’re away on your next mission, or you can instantly heal one member with the bacta tank, though it costs more to do so.
You’re able to spend your hard earned credits in a number of ways in the hub: upgrade crew perks, weapon types, or the facilities themselves — such as improving the med bay or building a droid repair bay; a must in my opinion as Astromechs are so clutch in combat. You can read more about the usefulness of droids here.
Exploring the Black Market on The Den can be costly but rewarding. You can purchase weapon mods and utility items from the store which are replenished after each combat encounter.
New operators can be recruited to fill holes in your roster, though I only ever used these a few times during the early game. It doesn’t take long before you’ve unlocked much more interesting crew members through the story, who you’ll want to use all the time (unless they’re injured).
At the holotable you’ll engage in operations, which are text based scenarios that can earn you credits, items, and influence. You can do as many of these as you have intel points for. Then there are the missions where you pick your squad and head into battle, you can only do one of these per cycle. Chatting with crew members offers insight into their character and can also unlock new operations and missions.
Missions and operations are only available for a certain amount of cycles before they disappear and you won’t be able to do them all, the game forces you to make decisions. Missing out on crew specific events can damage your relationships with them. Completing activities in specific sector zones earns influence within that zone, eventually unlocking rare items and perks, so there’s another level of strategy to which tasks you’re taking on.
Unsightly Jank
Playing on the base PS5, I experienced a lot of jank across my 35 hours with the game. Load screen animations would consistently freeze or lag, the difference in quality between main characters and fodder recruits was noticeable, and the artifacting around characters’ hair in many cutscenes was just awful. The cutscene jank was especially disappointing as it undermined and distracted from the excellent writing and performances.
Thankfully, there were fewer issues during actual combat sequences, the worst being the occasional screen freeze when switching from the player’s turn to the enemy’s. The freeze could last anywhere from 10 to 20 seconds, leaving me wondering if I’d need to restart the game.
Design wise, the only gripe I had was that maneuvering the aim reticle could be frustrating on a controller, especially when your target was on a higher or lower platform and would get stuck on the level geometry.
Should you play STAR WARS Zero Company?
STAR WARS Zero Company is an excellent video game. It takes you on a thrilling planet-hopping adventure while keeping grounded through its fantastic cast of characters. T
he gameplay loop of turn-based tactical combat and regrouping at the hub afterward is a really addictive cycle that I found hard to put down. While its technical issues let it down slightly, the rest of the game make up for it in spades.
The formula is too good to be a one-and-done, so here’s hoping we get a sequel, or anthology game in the same style.
If you’re a big STAR WARS or tactical RPG fan, this feels like a must play. The game is out now on PlayStation 5, PC, and XBOX Series X|S.
Quest Daily scores STAR WARS Zero Company:
9/10
Access to the game was provided by the publisher.
