Star Wars Zero Company review – XCOM wins the Clone Wars

From many of the same developers behind the classic XCOM series, comes a new Star Wars game where the story is just as good as the strategy-based action.

As long-suffering Star Wars fans our dream game has always been a Han Solo simulator, something like a cross between Elite and Star Wars Outlaws, but it’s never seemed likely to happen. Despite being huge fans of the XCOM series, a version of those games set in the Star Wars universe never occurred to us, not least because the fast-paced action of Star Wars isn’t an obvious fit for a turn-based strategy game.

Now that it’s happened though, not only is the end result one of the best Star Wars games of the modern era but, considering everything that’s happened to XCOM developer Firaxis recently, it’s almost certainly the closest we’ll ever get to XCOM 3 – at least from any of the original team, many of who left Firaxis to form new developer Bit Reactor.

That said, Zero Company is not just a reskin of XCOM. It’s a different game with different priorities, one of which is integrating an engaging, scripted storyline with a genre that is best known for its freeform structure and progression. The fact that it works as well as it does is just one of the game’s many triumphs.

Zero Company is set towards the end of the Clone Wars, but while it incorporates elements from the animated show, with smaller nods to things like Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, it is not the endless stream of fan references that Star Wars media so frequently devolves into. You don’t need to know or have watched anything before playing, as ultimately the set-up is a very straightforward one: there’s a star war going on and you’re the leader of a mercenary band that’s not aligned with either side.

As you start the game, you’re in debt to the Hutts but you soon become aware of a Separatist adjacent group called the Infinite Coil, who have strange, seemingly magical, abilities but whose activities are going under the radar because of the war. As a result, the Republic gives you a cash injection so you can help deal with them and, while you’re free to take on other missions as well, the central plot becomes fighting the Coil and a mind-altering plague that they’re propagating.

You already have a small team when you start but you can recruit more in terms of both main story characters, with their own sub-plots, and generic, randomised characters – as you would find in XCOM – that nevertheless have distinct personalities and backgrounds of their own.

We don’t want to spoil anything but there’s an ex-Clone Trooper from your old unit, a mechanic with a metal arm who speaks in a strange rhyming cadence, an aristocrat that’s also a crack shot, a Mandalorian who wants help tracking down some traitors, and a bookish Jedi whose master was killed by the plague.

All are memorable characters, thanks to an excellent script by one of the Star Wars Jedi writers, that is if anything better than either of those games. All the characters are endearing in some way and there’s some effective plot twists for many of them, as well as plenty of sassy humour. There’s even some subtle commentary on modern politics at times, that cleverly uses established Star Wars lore without you having to know any of it in advance.

Every time you complete a mission and come back to your home base you’re free to chat with your crew, who always seem to have something new to say. It’s similar to the approach in Marvel’s Midnight Suns (and before that Mass Effect) but where that became very bloated and overwhelming, here you can ignore all of the chatter if you want, with the game making it clear if talking to someone will open up a side mission.

The characters aren’t just distinctive because of their dialogue and visuals, as they all have their own unique skills, from Jae’s super useful ability to automatically finish off enemies that are low on health to Trick’s talent for reviving himself if he keels over. This is on top of character class abilities, all of which are highly useful and can be switched whenever you’re back at base, allowing for a huge amount of customisation even with the main characters.

Anyone can die permanently but it’s relatively difficult for that to happen, compared to XCOM. They have to run out of health three times in a mission (they can be revived the first two times), which is quite unlikely on the default difficulty; that’s not to say the game is easy but it’s not punishing at that level. It’s the two higher difficulty levels where things get tricky, although there’s also a lower setting for those not used to turn-based strategy games.

If you are a newbie, the basics are genuinely very straightforward. There’s an evolutionary connection with Japanese games like Final Fantasy Tactics, except here your team take all their goes first and then the enemy team. You view the world from an isometric view and simply point and click where you want to move to and who you want to attack, with the controls working very well on a controller.

Each character starts each turn with three action points (AP) which you can use to move three times or fire, the exact number you need for the latter depending on the character and the weapon. Many characters can also generate extra AP and give it to others – astromechs (the same droid type as R2-D2) are especially useful for this, as clever AP management becomes vital to success.

There are many levels of strategy to consider, the most obvious being don’t get caught in the open when your turn ends. Ideally, also turn on overwatch when you’re done, so you can take a potshot at enemies if they move near you on their turn. Although, unusually, overwatch in Zero Company is something you define via a vision cone whose size you control, with the wider the coverage the lower the potential accuracy – which is always calculated on a percentage.

Even with small innovations like that the central combat system does play very much like XCOM, but what sets it apart is just how unique the characters are, and the fun of creating chained attacks. Hitting each other up with extra AP is a vital tactic, but there’s always multiple opportunities for team combos too, where another character will fire on the same enemy as you – with several different ways for you to trigger their help. This has the additional benefit that it increases (or decreases if you hit them with friendly fire) characters’ bonds with each other, which leads to them both getting permanent buffs to their stats.

Although all the fighters are good, we’re not sure a Mandalorian has ever seemed cooler than the one in this game. On one mission we used her jetpack to slam down into a pack of enemies, which not only set them on fire but sent them flying, one of which went off the edge of the platform and down a crevasse. We then shot a bunch of them up with shock darts, which you can then detonate with an attack that uses Advantage points. These are used for special abilities, instead of AP, and are generated by attacking enemies. So we let off a few shots with her blaster and got enough Advantage to hit the detonation button. A few seconds later and five enemies lay dead after just one turn.

Organic moments like this are rife in the game and while Cy the Mandalorian is one of the most powerful characters, the Jedi Tel-Rea is arguably even more so. She works in a completely different way to the others, with no ability to use overwatch or utilities (which range from grenades to disorientating gas dispensers). Instead, she can deflect blaster bolts and push and pull with the Force, which is incredibly helpful if you’re pulling an enemy into range for one of your allies to then shoot at.

Her lightsaber attacks are very powerful, but they don’t instant kill, which can seem a bit odd given how they’re portrayed in the movies. However, in one memorable mission you get to control Anakin Skywalker, who one-shots absolutely everyone and is an amusing contrast to the more cerebral Tel-Rea. Even so, in a franchise were blaster bolts almost always kill everyone instantly it does feel a bit odd in the game, when you’re having to team-up with characters to gun down enemies over multiple turns.

As the developers said in our interview, you’ve got to make a game of it, and overall the Star Wars authenticity is very impressive. The one glaring fault is that so little use is made of iconic Star Wars aliens. All the ones you fight in the game are humanoids with very minor eccentricities, like horns or brightly coloured skin. From a distance they all just look like ordinary humans and that’s a real shame given the source material.

It’s made worse because the Coil soldiers all wear the same mask but despite that, and the fact that their leader is strangely underwritten compared to the rest of the cast, they do make for interesting opponents. Every time you kill one of them they pass on their resonance to the nearest ally, giving them increasingly more powerful abilities that can include invisibility and self-healing. So in many cases killing an enemy can be just as dangerous as leaving them alive.

We had some minor technical problems during the review period, with the camera getting confused when displaying finishing moves or when you’re trying to move between vertical levels. There can also be some long pauses when the console is thinking about its moves, but we’re told a day one patch will be released, that will hopefully mean you never see any of that.

In general, the graphics are very impressive for a strategy game, with the close-up views of your characters fighting looking great and some very cinematic cut scenes. The most unexpected extravagance is third person, over-the-shoulder intros to some key story missions, where you’re just wandering around taking in the location. The way this segues into the action is great, although it would’ve been nice if the civilians in these sections were also present during a battle, as otherwise the maps can look a bit empty and abstract.

Although it may seem like we’re predisposed to like the game, nobody hates Star Wars more than a Star Wars fan. And while we’re also huge XCOM fans this isn’t quite up to the perfection of XCOM 2, since its meta strategy level element is much more simplified. You can upgrade your base and fiddle with everyone’s loadouts and skill trees but there’s no R&D or base-building element.

These aren’t really flaws though, as the game is trying to do something different. XCOM barely has a story but the one in Zero Company is great, with characters engaging enough that we’d happily buy their action figures. Although it is a little frustrating that you can only bring four of them into a battle at a time, which inevitably means you don’t see much of the others unless your preferred choices are injured.

Surprisingly, there’s no post-game experience, once you’ve beaten the 30+ hour campaign, but you do open a New Game+, which gives you an excuse to focus on the characters you didn’t use the first time round.

The idea is to replay the game, ideally on a higher difficulty, and use characters and abilities you don’t get into the first time round. That’s something we intend to do as soon as we’ve got the time, as even with our stated proclivities this was a lot better than we expected – or rather it was a lot better at things we never expected it to be good at.

Zero Company would almost certainly never have been made if it didn’t have the Star Wars licence attached, showing how using an existing franchise can allow more niche games to attract larger budgets and how those games can, in turn, enrich the IP itself. Zero Company is the best thing to happen to strategy games and Star Wars for several years, creating a dream team that no one asked for but everyone should try to experience for themselves.

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £49.99
Publisher: EA
Developer: Bit Reactor and Respawn Entertainment
Release Date: 27th August 2026
Age Rating: 16

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