STAR WARS Zero Company™

An XCOM-style game set in the Star Wars universe, which already has me in love with the game. The DNA of Midnight Suns is also in here, as your agents, operatives or whatever you want to call them, level up via their "friendship" or "bond" with other characters, primarily earned through joint deployment. But this is a turn-based team strategy game, both in the strategic layer, where "cycles" or days really become your turn, and in the mission layer, where turns are already familiar to those who have played XCOM. A few things separate this from other games of its like, being the importance of chance-to-hit, how overwatch works, and the action point economy. Starting with Action points, each character starts each turn with 3 action points as opposed to the more traditional 2, and your main character, along with the Astromech classes can grant more action points to other characters, meaning that action point economy is less about min-maxing and about the flow of battles. Which ties back into the chance-to-hit. The game is fairly generous on Normal difficulty about weapon ranges and flanking angles, so long as your operator has line-of-sight, there is a non-zero chance that they could hit, and at fairly long ranges it can be a substantial chance. It is not possible to have your operator sitting in an enemy's face and randomly decide that the moon actually needs to be put in its place when they take their shot, that is a 100% chance to hit, though of course, you can miss the 90's and 95's. I personally never felt that missing those 90% shots, partially due to other game mechanics like advantage (a resource for special abilities that do not consume action points), and partially because both your team and the enemy team have much higher durability, ruined a turn like it would in XCOM. Finally, overwatch. Similar to Phoenix Point, you can set up a "cone" of overwatch, which shows your chance to hit if an enemy crosses that cone. This overwatch also makes 1 shot per action point consumed, meaning that weapons that consume multiple action points like Repeaters or Snipers can make 3 shots per turn as opposed to 1 or 2 if you use overwatch correctly. In *addition* to that, overwatch has a base 50% chance of interrupting the turn of the enemy that was damaged. EVEN AGAIN, that overwatch is not limited to the enemy turn, if, for whatever reason, that enemy is moved or takes an action, either by their own special abilities such as retaliation abilities, or because you moved them with an ability or item, that overwatch is triggered. This makes for really fun combinations and is a welcome addition to the strategy of an XCOM style game. Onto "operators" as Zero Company calls them. Operators have a class line, and a trait line. Class lines are familiar, like sharpshooters being good at taking long shots with sniper rifles and overwatch, medics being good at healing and buffing etc. And you spend points levelling specific abilities in these classes, meaning two of the same class can play totally differently, with one medic focussed on healing, the other medic focussed on buffing, or one assault class focussed on melee damage, the other focussed on flanking shots. The trait lines are separate to classes, and can provide unique playstyles, buffs to the strategic layer (such as earning resources for each mission they complete) etc. but they level in the same way, where you spend "focus points" on levelling that trait. Both traits and classes are fully respeccable, you can move your "focus points" from one ability to another completely freely outside of missions, and in most cases, swap the class or the trait with no downside. You have several narrative operatives who you see on the cover, like one jedi, one mandalorian, etc. Each of these characters each have a unique class, or a unique "trait" which cannot be changed which alters how they play. For example, one of your first narrative companions has a unique trait focussed on "uppercutting" the enemy, if this ability defeats the enemy, then all action points spent on that specific move are refunded. This trait cannot be changed, but their class can be changed. Non-narrative companions are totally customisable, from species, to appearance, to outfit, to name, backstory, voice, class, trait, the whole kit and kaboodle, and narrative companions are not always customisable in the same way. You can alter most outfits, but you can't change their name, voice, or appearance in almost any case. Both types of companions can permanently die, which in the case of narrative companions, locks you out of their personal story and the unique rewards from their missions, but I didn't ever lose an operator on the normal difficulty because death works differently to just "HP reached zero, now dead". When an operator reaches zero HP, they "go down" and can be revived. Each time this happens they gain an injury, when an operator gets 3 concurrent injuries, that is when they die. This never happened to me outside the tutorial where they introduce that mechanic, but it is potentially a much higher risk on higher difficulties. The setting and the story are both great, they're not masterclasses like you're not gonna come to this game for a tear-jerking query into the meaning of life and friendship or anything, but they're standouts in the genre. XCOM's story was more of an excuse or background thing that justified the missions to occur and offered unique missions, this is much more of a linear story journey with optional missions occuring between critical story beats. Each critical mission is unavoidable, the strategic layer gives every mission a "timer" where you have to complete the mission by a certain time, and optional missions can go away, but critical missions will force you to do the mission on the last day that it is available. Spoilers for the in-game length: [spoiler] All-up, this game is about 40 "cycles" long [/spoiler] and there isn't, at the time of writing, any method of padding the game out before the final mission. Setting-wise, this is a perfect marriage of Disney Star Wars and Lucas Star Wars where we have the alien species that seem to have been left behind by Disney like Devaronians, Mirialan and Weequay, along with new ones added by Disney like the Lasat or Ovissian. It treats the Lucas-era source material with a great amount of depth and respect, with limited cameos by recognisable characters where I personally felt that it was appropriate and not nostalgia-baiting. It felt like this game was occurring at the same time, in the same universe, with the same major players, as the wider universe, without shoe-horning in recognisable faces with no justification. You can play missions on planets both new and old, like Dantooine or Scarif, the in-mission settings look amazing, the weapons are authentically Star Wars, and sound amazing, absolutely no notes for the setting. My major critique is that the game can feel too short by the end, where I got really invested throughout the whole game, when it started wrapping up, I still wanted more. Mileage may vary on that one, but I'm a huge Star Wars geek, and just wanted to see the story continue. Gameplay was strong, each of my operators felt like a powerhouse, specifically specialised in their playstyle, with apparent and cohesive teams. I feel like the game could really benefit from New Game+ or some kind of "endless" mode where you can keep developing your team beyond the main story, earning new weapon mods and items, powering up even more of your roster. But I think this will be something I can replay and enjoy just as much as my first 40 or so hours with it, perhaps even more now that I know the length of the game, the importance of certain upgrades over others, etc. This will probably be a game I try to earn every achievement in and I can firmly recommend this to any fan of Star Wars or fan of the XCOM-style genre.

PSA - if you have an injured party member, DON'T use the medical centre unless you have at least 600 credits or the 'tutorial' help will lock your game and you'll have to load a save.

Crashing

yes

OUI.

would love some sort of post campaign endless mode. Fun time and pretty repayable - took me 3.5 campaigns to 100% it

well it has great single play value. absolutely nothing in way of post game playing. they just tell you to start over and pick a difference race. hard pass. I was hoping for a bunch of side missions in post game but nope, huge let down. only giving a thumbs up because the story was fun. but thats literally all it has going for it