STAR WARS Zero Company™

Excellent narrative driven evolution of the XCOM genre. Loving it so far. Tactical play is fun and challenging, plenty of abilities to mess around with, combos to discover. Story is excellent, well written and executed. At time of writing this review I'm still encountering a few bugs that have required a reload (2 or 3 times over 70 hours of play), which is disappointing...but the game is good enough to deal with it, and I'm hopeful it'll get patched up over time.

I really liked this one. It took me thirty hours to beat and I was pretty completionist about it. I'm a big turn-based-tactics fan and this is a very competent XCOM-like with a lot of QOL features that make the game feel good to play. The base-building felt impactful and there are a lot of cool things you can do with character builds, since you unlock the ability to give characters a second class fairly early on. There are a bunch of unique characters with their own unique abilities that all feel impactful without overshadowing regular units. Also, as a big plus, it really nailed the Star Wars feel to me: the dialogue, music, and style all made it feel like a proper Star Wars experience in a way that was much more than just a Star Wars skin on XCOM 2. There were a couple of bugs, mostly around overwatch, but nothing gamebreaking or really any worse than just some excusable silliness. It's not going to be my GOTY, but it'll probably be in the top five, and I genuinely enjoyed every minute of it I played.

If you like Star Wars and XCOM this is a perfect game for you. This isn't a super long or hard game unless you play on expert, but damn did I enjoy the story and the characters. 10/10 game if you like FF tactics, Fire Emblem, or XCOM.

If you like XCOM but wanted a more casual experience within the Star Wars universe this is a great game. Just don't come in thinking you need to heavily strategize prior to encounters, although reading and making educated guesses on encounters can help you better prepare like if there is going to be droids and etc... Character stories are nice and completely optional/misable although you can complete most side stories in one play through. Never had a character die in my hard playthrough and you'll tend to favor the same usual team so additional operators are nice but never needed 99% of the time. Overall just a good all around game you'll need at least two playthroughs to 100% Good for its price now but even better when on sale and when more patches come throught to fix the performance/bugs 8/10 Story 8/10 Combat 6/10 Optimization

Scratches that XCom itch

Its okay. Isn't great, but isn't bad. Could have been great, but it isnt. Just okay. Tactical combat is decent, can make some unique builds. The entire game outside of the tactical battles is pretty boring and bland.

The game has crashed my whole computer 5 or 6 times in the time I've played it. Always when saving so I have to go back to the last save, like the start of a battle after I finish the battle.

First half of the game is awesome. Like many other games, the second half is alright. Feels like the main villain wasn't really built up that well. I wish there were more weapons, that animations can be skipped in combat, and that turns are faster. Another thing I would've liked is to send out other squads on some side missions or something. Feels like I have this big ol' crew and I only really used them to buff up my main 4 folks. I hope to see some future DLC, this game was great.

7/10 Vanilla. 8/10 w/ Mods. I never played Xcom but I would describe this as Baldurs Gate 3 mixed with Star Wars. Zero Company is a staple Star Wars game. Good story, though there are some problems. The player cannot play at their own pace. The game will force you to progress the campaign before you can do all the side missions/operations per cycle. This can be alleviated somewhat with mods that extend side mission/operation durations, but the cycle system still forces you to progress the campaign and miss out on side content. Some people may say that is a charm of the game, but I disagree. Player freedom should always be a priority. Now onto replayability. Is the game replayable? Yes, even more so with mods. However, in my opinion, like alot of games, there is just that one mission that you dread to get past because it's a slog. For me, that's the Bespin mission and the Lucrehulk mission. If you know, you know. Content wise, it's just decent for a Star Wars title. There's a few humanoid alien races to choose from, nothing crazy. Definitely needs some more iconic Star Wars alien species (Trandoshans, Wookies, Shistavanen, Chiss, Duros, Kel Dor, Mon Calamari, etc.) though I suspect those will be coming later on down the line as DLC (Hopefully). Cosmetics are good. You'll spend a long time in the character customization menus if you're a Star Wars fan. A big problem though is the lack of weapon variety. Each weapon type only has 4-5 appearances. There are so many more weapons in Star Wars to include, making this feel like such a missed opportunity. Luckily, modders are adding new weapons to alleviate this. Overall, for a Star Wars game in it's vanilla state, there just isn't enough content/customization options in my opinion. This is one of those game where I'd say you should only play it modded to get the full Star Wars experience.