Star Wars: Zero Company- Review
At the Cottage, we are massive fans of all things Science Fiction and all the X-COM games. So, you smash the sublime turn-based combat of X-COM 2 with a fresh new Star Wars story set during the Clone Wars era, oooooooh baby, do you catch our attention!!
Star Wars: Zero Company has been built by Bit Reactor which is a studio made up of ex-Firaxis developers. The very studio which gave us X-COM 2! Yes, you are correct, a “pattern of awesome” is starting to form. And to top it off, these amazing devs have added into the special tactical-sauce, a full-blown story with an engaging cast of characters, stunning voice acting and a meaningful consequence to choices.
So mechanics wise, let just nail that down first. Well…..it is X-COM 2, simple as that. Why mess with perfection I reckon. You know the juice- move tiles, shoot, overwatch, heal and buff team mates, clear the map or get to the objective. That said its been 10yrs since X-COM 2, so the interface here is far smoother, powers and abilities interplay is a bit more nuanced, and it is generally a bit more approachable. I have played through on ‘Hard’, and it has felt more like a traditional ‘Normal’ difficulty, so tuned for the mainstream I suspect. Don’t fret though, ‘Iron-Man’ Difficulty is here for you tactical purists.
It’s X-COM 2 in a Star Wars wrapper…I can’t say it simpler than that.
The new element to this great formula is the story and some minor 3rd person exploration. Frankly, the calibre of the story and voice acting is way better than it deserves to be. It is really, REALLY good. Your main character and team leader, “Hawks” is a grizzled gunslinger type, taking on jobs and contracts to make ends meet. The cast around him are all interact-able between missions at home base. Each have wee story arcs and parallel narratives to the main games campaign.
There is a texture and meaning to your Team, something X-COM never had. If anything, I got Mass Effect vibes! Between missions I would chat with the Jedi, the Mando, the ex-Clone Trooper and the rest, or eaves drop on them as they chatted nearby. The voice acting is so good and so well written, I just loved it when a combat mission ended as I knew there was more chats and gossip to catch up on at base.
There is conflict, friendships and light hearted ribbing within this rag tag group and I loved it.
My only complaint is the technical performance. The game looks and sounds great when its running right. But on PC at least, the pop-in and artifacting, particularly during loading screens and transitions is dire at times. That even running with optimised settings on a RTX 50 series card. In one cut scene, my character Hawks, didn’t even load. So there was a conversation occurring with a new team mate and an etherial Hawks voice was the only evidence he was even supposed to be in this scene. I suspect a few patches will be incoming.
Overall, I cannot speak highly enough about Star Wars: Zero Company. It has the magic of X-COM2 and the story and characters of a Mass Effect-Lite. At this point of 2026, it is the front-runner for my Game Of The Year.
