STAR WARS Zero Company™

With my first playthrough now completed, I can safely say that Zero Company is the XCOM 2 successor I've been waiting and hoping for. This game is everything I once hoped Chimera Squad or Midnight Suns might turn out to be, only to learn they went in completely different design directions instead. Here the mission gameplay is solid XCOM, while the between-missions sections have taken major lessons in character-driven cinematic storytelling from the likes of Mass Effect. The biggest cons of Zero Company, for me, mostly come in the form of trade-offs. For one, the game being so cinematic and heavily story-driven make it all the more engaging the first time around, but will obviously cost it replayability. For another, the overall mechanics of this game, both in and out of combat, are just that little bit further simplified, making it easier for newcomers to pick up, but again costing some of the tactical depth many of us came for. Yet while some argue these are game-ruining flaws, I remember once having similar thoughts about vanilla XCOM 2 - then War of the Chosen fixed most of those issues, and mod-makers blew through the rest in the process of adding exponentially more game content. Sadly, the company behind Zero Company do not seem all that likely at present to be able to put out a solid expansion and mod support in future. If they could, I would be extremely confident in this title becoming the new genre-definer for some time. Without that, XCOM 2 will probably hold its title longer-term, but Zero Company is still without question a solid gaming experience right up there with it. (And when the worst thing you can say about a game is you might only want to finish it 2 or 3 times, not 20 or 30, that's hardly the most scathing of criticisms.) Then, on top of all that, it's Star Wars. Done well. That's a wonder of its own, and yet somehow almost the least remarkable thing about Zero Company.

Excelente

pending

Great game - good story and voice acting. Good tactics. Some minor performance issues. Hopefully, we will get a second game.

I'll be blunt this is not the sandboxy XCOM spiritual successor I dreamed it would be but it's a damn fine story focused Star Wars XCOM like and I've had an absolutely fantastic time with it. I pray for a future "endless mode" or sandbox focused DLC that lets me just merc company in the Star Wars universe but for now it's a fantastic first play through and I can't wait to see what the modders do with it.

Good game.

In as few words as possible. The good: this is a Star Wars game for fans of the animation series and prequels. Excellent story, fun combat and cool companions. The bad: the CC is lacking but doesn't restrict options by gender; there are performance issues, but they didn't affect my enjoyment. Day one buy for me.

Good for star wars fans

Just finished the game around 55h on hardest difficulty. Loved it. Do not expect XCOM 3, its not. Its more akin to Gears of Wars, but with more complexity. The game is story oriented with some side quests you can do here and there but often times you'll be moving the campaign in a linear path. That said, its still meaty and have some decent depth to it. You got your typical attack, move and overwatch skills for battles but then every unit have their own classes and special unique skills. You can level up your units to make them stronger, buy weapon modifications and utility items to improve their gears and loadouts. You can upgrade your base for permenant boosts. Gameplay consist of 2 phases. 1 is the base phase, where you can talk to your companions, buy stuff, heal your units and upgrade your base. This phase also gives your the oppotunity to spend "intel" points to complete operations, which in turn give you resources for your base and units. Once you have done so, you can then do official missions which is where you send and play battles. And then the 2nd phase is completing the missions themselves. They are usually pretty simple except for a few ones. Where the game gets special is the bond system. Theres nothing to really compare it too. XCOM 2 does something similar but this one is a lot more deep. Basically in missions when you use some of your skills, they increase your bonds between teammates. When you come back to base those bonds improve your relationships and give you permenant stats that you can pick and choose. This give you the ability to make unique builds. The story is not necessarily amazing but its not bad at all. Its pretty good and there are lots of cameos from the movies. I was definitely entertained and absolutely enjoyed it. Id say its a solid tactical game. I wholeheartedly recommend it to any strategy game fans. This is also a game that has a good foundation for DLCs and a sequel. It is totally worth it imo. Great experience!

TL;DR: Great game with minor issues, and also plagued by EA bs. I'm not finished with the game, but the game itself seems really fun so far. I will say that, if you are at all into Star Wars as a franchise, the game is worth giving a try, and even more so if it goes on sale. Even if you aren't into or have never played a turn-based tactics game, it is genuinely fun. I never played X-COM (which many reviewers say the game is akin to), and only played a few turn-based tactics style games (FFT, most notably, which is somewhat similar to this), and I'm having a great time. The amount of buzz words, buffs or debuffs, items, the UI, world map, the systems, it all feels like quite a bit when the game first introduces them, but once you get the hang of it, it's really fun. I initially refunded this game because of some frustration with this, some animations in the hub world seeming off, the Mass Effect Andromeda style facial expressions and movements, and some general initial release fuss. I was hesitant at the time whether the game would be fun. But after seeing many others enjoy the game, I decided to give it another go, and man am I glad I did. The flow of combat, balancing your team, customizing your characters, the music, visuals, they are all solid. The game allowing you to flexibly swap your team around on the fly and test things out is really nice to have, as it encourages experimentation and doesn't punish you for committing to a loadout or skillset choice you made previously. When you get your squad to synergize and work together well it feels genuinely rewarding. It also doesn't seem like there is any wrong playstyle or skillset you can go with, so long as you build and play around its strengths, which is nice to see. I've seen many people say different things as far as how they build each of their characters and whatnot, which is a great sign of a strategy game. I will say that it isn't all perfect, as there are a handful of gripes I have with the game. For one, I wish you had a bit more interaction and story development with the side characters, whether they're generic or not. The non-recruited characters all seem distinct in their design and function, and it is nice being able to give them whatever skillset you think might suit them best. However, their little story missions don't do much to strengthening a relationship with them and making them feel like another companion out of Mass Effect or something. I guess this wasn't really a thing in Final Fantasy Tactics so maybe I'm asking for too much with this game, but still; I'm also not even sure how you'd tackle such a feat with the generic characters. The generic characters themselves feel neat, but somewhat pointless to me, since the non-generic characters can use the same skillsets with (often, at least in my opinion) better passives/subskills. Maybe I'm just biased towards the non-generic characters though. I also wish that the game was more explorable in some way. The game does these weird ultra-linear walking sequences where you walk for like less than 100 meters down a linear path where there is exactly one NPC and one (bright glowing) item that you interact with and immediately walk away from, then you arrive at the combat zone, and I don't know why the game even decided to bother. I didn't expect some open-world explorable zone at each planet or something, but it's just a weird design choice to me when its so painfully clear that the walking sections have so little thought or design put into them. Re: bugs, performance What I will say is that I haven't had that many performance issues while playing. No stuttering, no input delay. I have had one major crash (no bsod though) and one soft crash/freeze, but, other than that, I have not had any major performance issues. There have been some bugs I have noticed with some movement animations not loading, attacks not playing out for some reason (but still dealing damage), some instances where Overwatch (a general ability) doesn't trigger properly, but they all haven't been consistent enough for me to write off the game as being utterly problematic. If you are willing to tolerate some light performance issues, it is a lot of fun. I have never had a character die, or even go down, and have yet to suffer a major loss or something from such a bug happening. ~ Given the game's success, I am hoping to see more improvements made to the game - bug fixes, DLC added for more story, missions, dialogue, races, weapons, classes, customization, etc. etc. - but I'm not sure if it'll happen given the news about the development team being on furlough. It's sad to see, and like many Star Wars video game projects, they seem doomed to always be in some sort of development hell, getting neutered or blocked from becoming truly great. Only time will tell though. Hopefully I am proven wrong by EA.