STAR WARS Zero Company™

"Missed a 90% or greater chance to hit shot!" — true Stormtrooper tradition. This is a genuinely good tactical game built on the XCOM formula, but with a much stronger focus on the tactical layer itself, even though there is still some base management involved. Character progression is not limited to simply gaining experience, either. The game encourages you to interact with your squadmates and develop them through relationships within the team. It is not an incredibly deep system - most of the time it comes down to passing certain ability between squad members or using some active skills - but it works surprisingly well at making your squad feel like an actual unit. So how does it all feel? Surprisingly fresh - if you make it through the first half of the game. The biggest thing that immediately won me over was obviously the Star Wars setting. On top of that, the game looks fantastic. Combat effects are punchy, cover can be destroyed and actually affects gameplay, everyone is constantly exchanging blaster fire, and Jedi deflect incoming shots. Some of that is mostly visual flair, but it makes battles feel much more alive. The maps are relatively compact, but I never felt like they became repetitive too quickly. The Star Wars atmosphere has been recreated with a lot of care. The familiar music will probably be a treat for hardcore fans, and there is definitely plenty of fan service as well. But the game is not without its rough edges. The engine shows its weaknesses through stuttering. The game genuinely looks great, but sometimes it stutters almost like Jedi: Survivor. The soundtrack also starts becoming noticeably repetitive after around five hours, especially when battles drag on at higher difficulty levels. And then there is my personal favorite: missing shots with 70%, 80%, or even 95% hit chances. I understand perfectly well that probability is probability and that this is part of the genre. But when my sniper missed both shots of a double-shot ability at around 90%, and then immediately missed a regular attack at 95%, my frustration reached its limit. Situations like that become especially painful on higher difficulties. I am not sure whether this was directly related to the difficulty setting, but enemies often seemed to hit my operatives far more consistently from roughly the same distances. After Cycle 9, I finally had to accept that I am still a casual player and switched the difficulty down to Normal. That was also when I started noticing some other problems. Constant reinforcements during evacuation / hacking missions can drag fights out for far too long and eventually become tedious. If you switch back to a higher difficulty, enemies start feeling like damage sponges, and you are forced to play almost every encounter right on the edge of failure. At the same time, that pressure does force you to use almost every tool available to you, combine abilities properly, and constantly find ways out of bad situations. Because of that, successfully finishing a difficult mission feels much more rewarding. Evacuation points can also sometimes appear on the opposite side of the map, which always made me wonder: why exactly can I not be extracted somewhere near the place I originally entered from? Of course, I cannot rule out the possibility that some of my problems were entirely my own fault and that I simply built my characters badly. Thankfully, skills can be freely respecced, and I really appreciate the developers for that. At around 10 hours, I took a break from the game and came back to it some time later. And that was when something clicked. I unlocked the Mandalorian, and suddenly the game felt fresh again. A few story moments also added some much-needed variety to a couple of missions. It almost felt like the game started all over again for me. The little annoyances stopped bothering me. I finally started playing properly. I understood what my squadmates were capable of and learned how to combine their abilities effectively. I stopped save-scumming because I simply did not need to anymore. I started noticing the funny conversations around the base, the characters began to feel more alive, more abilities kept opening up, and at some point I realized that I genuinely liked the game again. So I am very glad I did not drop it halfway through and decided to come back. To me, the simple fact that a game like this exists and actually turned out to be genuinely good already feels like a success. We do not get enough games like this, and there absolutely should be more of them. Most importantly, Zero Company does not feel like another attempt to milk Star Wars fans or tactical game enthusiasts. It has an identity of its own, and at times it genuinely offers a fresh experience. It is not perfect. But judging by the reviews, a lot of people - myself included - expected some weird, mediocre Star Wars spin-off and ended up getting a surprisingly strong tactical game instead.

Yet another Star wars game that was designed based on the presumption that it will sell on the IP alone. Like most Star Wars games, the controls suck. The graphics also suck. I don't need to see the pores in someone's cheeks, yet have most of the textures look worse than 20 year old games. Hair looks like pre-animation visuals for 90s Pixar models. The customization is garbage. I can build better looking Star Wars characters in City of Heroes. I was really looking forward to this one. I guess that alone should have told me it would be disappointing trash. Guess I'll pull a refund, and maybe I'll buy it again on a Black Friday in a few years for $5.

Great game and so much potential in DLC or sequels! The guest appearances are great and including Jedi and Mandalorian in the party was a great decision. Moving forward, so much good story good to be told along with more complex gameplay and perhaps more RPG elements. Hope the developers get paid and can continue to work on this game.

Unfortunately I already bought it but the devs did the modern thing and pretended like Male and Female do not exist as well as made NPCs refer to your main character as a plural pronoun instead of the OBVIOUS male or female options... Save your money.

I've played through the campaign on Normal, so my review reflects my experience from that perspective. The entire campaign took me about 26 hours, and I didn't 100% everything, but I explored enough to feel satisfied and a lot of side content. Cons; There are some bugs and frustrating things. Sometimes a character just stops doing things and stand there, staring into nothing, for 30+ seconds before the game unfreezes and lets you play again. Overwatch is a roll of the dice, and kind of broken. You can have a character flat inside the overwatch zone with a 100% chance to hit, but your character just doesn't feel like shooting. These two bugs account for at least 85% of all bugs I've encountered, and while they're frustrating, they're not a dealbreaker to me. Pros; It feels like an old school Star Wars game. I actually liked the story, and if you're into XCOM-style gameplay (like me!) you'll enjoy it. There were a couple of cameos that I didn't expect, and I think the game does a good job anchoring you in the timeline. The story actually surprised me a couple of times, and I think the story got stronger over time. It's nice to pick out your team, customize them, and trying out team compositions. Oh, and the Coil Brute just sucks. A damage sponge that retaliates against your attacks? Just no fun to fight against. Damage sponges are never fun. If there's a mod to remove this one enemy from the game, that'd be great. All my homies hate Coil Brutes. All in all I'm happy with my purchase, and if there's any DLC I'll get it and do a Hard playthrough.

Its a 'good' game, don't get me wrong. But for a $90 game (NZD) it shouldnt be this broken and buggy. Bugs: Overwatch is often glitchy and just doesnt trigger. Turns can often hang up for like 30-60 seconds. Action camera will often put you in an angle where you cant see anything. Some cover is oddly restrictive with overwatch. Preformance is kinda terrible. Bad points: Camera is just kinda terrible alot of the time. The main enemy faction is just a slog and boring to fight, like the droids are cool, the gangs are cool but the Coil just suck... also like i'm not a lore guy but I don't think that the Sep's would want a cult that kills the majority of inducties running the show.. whats the point of capturing a planet when 2/3'rds of the population are dead and the rest have some space plauge? Good points: Game is fun, the combat is good, the way you can bounce buffs off your squad is nice and not over the top. I like how limited the outfitting your squad is as it helps focus on the gameplay a bit more. It looks good, sounds good. The hit percentages actually feel like hit percentages. I just wish that instead of fighting coil you were fighting rouge clones or something instead, or like, anything but the coil.

Its refreshing playing a game that feel complete. The voice acting on some of the characters is really enjoyable, there is interesting progression, and plenty going on to keep you interested. Several improvements and new features for the genre when compared to XCOM as well. The performance needs some work, but this type of game doesn't necessarily need 60fps to still be enjoyable.