Star Wars: Zero Company is a bit of a different Star Wars title than I am used to playing. It is a single player turn-based tactics game, akin to something like the Xcom series. In Star Wars Zero Company, players assume the role of Hawks, a former Republic officer who had a falling out with his previous employer and is now running his own unit. The Infinite Coil is an emerging threat in the galaxy and it is up to Zero Company to eliminate it. For those who are wondering when Zero Company takes place, it is during the Clone Wars.
Throughout the journey Hawks will be presented with many different options and potentially difficult decisions. Your decisions will carry weight as they might positively (or negatively) affect your relationship with one of the other members of Zero Company or miss out on a nice piece of equipment that could have been beneficial. Make the right decision though and the benefits will definitely be apparent on the next mission.
Star Wars Zero Company runs in cycles. Whenever you do a big mission or operation, that takes one cycle. Within each cycle there are a number of things to get done. When returning to base after a mission, I always had Hawks go up to every member of the team and see what they had to say. The development wrote some interesting dialogue that shouldn’t be missed, especially for Kabb.As cycles progress the crew will grow closer depending on your choices and you can see forms bonding in their conversations as the story goes on. Your base is also where preparations are made for the upcoming mission. This is where you can customize your character to look how you want. There is an armory where you can mod weapons using equipment you have earned to try and give you an edge on the battlefield. There is also a black market where you can buy new weapons or accessories, as long as you have enough money to do so.
This is also where you can work on the different members of Zero Company. There is a skill tree where you can give additional health to some of your members, or maybe increase the amount of damage a weapon does, or whatever the case may be. As teammates complete missions and objectives with each other, bonds will grow. After the mission is complete there is the option to strengthen a bond which will improve both members. For example, there might be an option for “A Friendly Game” and if you pick this, both operators that have had their bond increased will get +40 Bond XP or if you want to go another route you can choose “Timing Exercises” which will increase Critical Chance by 3% for both operators. I enjoyed the different avenues that are offered here and I always liked selecting the option that would deepen bonds as I felt that might help later on in the game.
As I mentioned earlier, the combat in the game is turn-based. Your group is placed in an area, along with a group of enemies. There are different items you can take cover behind, different locations you can move to and, of course, you can engage in combat if you so choose. Keep in mind that every character has a set amount of AP every turn. So, for example, if you have 4 AP and moving your character to a different part of the battlefield will take 4 AP, then you won’t be able to mount any offense on that particular turn. On the contrary, if you are happy with the location of one of your characters and don’t need to move and firing your weapon only takes 2 AP, then you can choose to engage an enemy twice (or two enemies if the first enemy is eliminated with one shot). Once all of the decisions have been made for your squad, hit the “End Turn” button and then sit back and watch how your decisions have play out. Assuming you survive everything the enemy throws at you, it will be your turn again to plan out your next moves. Keep in mind that there might be objectives on the battlefield as well. Sometimes it is simply eliminate the enemy but other times it might be to use a safecracker to steal an item, or make sure your whole squad gets to a rally point to be evacuated. Star Wars Zero Company is a strategy game so you do need to think ahead as much as possible, especially during the instances where one of the conditions of victory is that a particular teammate must remain healthy throughout the mission.
For the purposes of this review, I went through Star Wars Zero Company on the Xbox Series X. Unfortunately, this game isn’t fully optimized for consoles. When switching from cinematics to gameplay, I noticed frequent stuttering. At times there were some big framerate drops. Star Wars Zero Company is not a game where you need to have quick reflexes but the drop in frame rate is annoying nonetheless. There were also a few times when the game would lock up during the middle of a mission. For me there were instances where my team would be in the middle of completing objectives in a mission and then the game would just lock up. I could still pause the game, restart the mission and everything, but I couldn’t make any other choices and my characters couldn’t do anything. The game would just sit there, not doing anything. This happened on a few occasions and was really frustrating, especially since that meant I would have to do that mission over and over until the game worked well enough to let me complete it and move on.
To be crystal clear, during my entire time with the game, this only happened a handful of times. It still negatively impacted my experience but I don’t want to paint the picture this happened on every mission. The stuttering and frame rate drops happened far more often but at least the game kept running, which wasn’t the case during those instances where I simply couldn’t advance in the mission because the game got hung up on something.
One aspect of the game I think fans will enjoy is that there are parts of the campaign that are fairly linear but also other parts that might vary from playthrough to playthrough. Zero Company members might have different conversations, upgrades paths might be a bit different, and the effectiveness of your enemy will change depending on your decisions in crucial moments and it will be interesting to watch others play to see what happens.
When Hawks is at the Holotable deciding the next move, there are usually three different options. There is “Influence” “Operations”, and “Missions”. For Influence you want to send contacts to different zones when you can to expand your influence, which will help out your base and the overall team. For example, getting to Tier 3 in one zone will give you one additional upgrade facility slot, so you can upgrade more than one thing at a time. Operations are run off of intel. If you have 100 intel points but have three operations available that each require 50 intel, obviously you can’t do all three, so you will have to pick which ones to do. Pay particular attention to how long these operations will be available. If you have three operations available with one of them expiring in four cycles,the other in two, and then the other in one, you should definitely pick the operation that is about to expire first. Those other ones will still be available to you in the next cycle when you are making decisions. Always be mindful of this so that you don’t miss out on a particularly useful operation.
Missions operate in a similar manner. Missions do not run on intel points but they are also available based on cycles. If one mission expires in four cycles and another expires in one, it should be obvious which one should be selected next. Some missions are optional and don’t ever need to be selected if that is the way you want to go while others advance the story forward and are therefore not optional. If there are two missions you want to do but they both expire in the next cycle, then you might regret how you didn’t balance them correctly, especially if one of the missions is required so by that point, you have to miss out on a potentially good optional mission regardless of how you feel.
From time to time Hawks is also faced with Dilemmas where a decision must be made and you also need to figure out how to sabotage your enemy, but that comes at a cost. For example, you can sabotage your enemy’s armor so their defense stats remain low but doing that means their rockets will do more damage when they hit you. There is a risk reward scenario going on here so you need to decide on what you can accept and what you don’t want to deal with on the battlefield.
Star Wars Zero Company is a strategy game that can be as deep as you want it to be. If you are new to the genre or just want to experience the story without a particularly big challenge, by all means put it on easy. On the other side of that, if you want a hardcore challenge that might make you sweat and force you to adopt advanced tactics, go to Expert mode to see how long you can survive. If you are a fan of Star Wars this a fun story to experience. If you are a fan of these types of games and like similar titles such as Xcom, be sure to give Star Wars Zero Company a try. There are some issues that need to be ironed out as I mentioned above (at least on console) but I enjoyed my overall experience.
Score: 7/10
Originally posted on Shadow’s Gaming
Please Note: EA provided us with a code for Star Wars Zero Company for review.
