Star Wars Zero Company, developed by Bit Reactor and Respawn Entertainment, places players in the late Republic era, focusing on a mercenary group navigating the galactic conflict. The game offers a turn-based strategy experience that draws heavily from Firaxis Games' XCOM: Enemy Unknown, featuring squad-based tactical combat on isometric battlefields. Players manage action points to move units, utilize cover, and engage enemies with percentage-based hit chances, with an Overwatch mode for defensive turns.
Between missions, players prioritize base upgrades to improve units and galactic influence. The core gameplay loop involves solving combat puzzles through the use of increasingly specialized abilities unlocked by the game's nine base classes. These classes can be mixed and matched, allowing for secondary specializations that broaden a character's toolset and enable synergistic plays. Experimentation is encouraged, as classes can be changed at any time to adapt to specific encounters.
While the game emphasizes permanent choices, lasting consequences are introduced through an ally bonding system, which grants stat buffs that can benefit specific classes. Many characters also possess unique abilities that incentivize certain playstyles. Enemy variety ensures that the tinkering with weapons, utilities, and skill points remains worthwhile. The Hard difficulty setting provides a sufficient challenge for tactics enthusiasts, encouraging careful planning to set up advantageous plays like buff stacking and area-of-effect attacks.
Although the penalty for failure is lenient, with allies requiring three consecutive downs to suffer permanent death, injuries can impose stat penalties. These injuries require credits and time to heal, creating a cost for poor play. While not as relentlessly harsh as XCOM, Zero Company offers incentives to minimize costly mistakes, reflecting the mercenary nature of the player-controlled Hawks and their company.
The narrative follows Hawks, a disgraced Republic officer leading the mercenary crew Zero Company. To settle debts with the Hutts, Hawks accepts a job from a Republic intelligence agent investigating a cult known as the Coil. This investigation quickly embroils Zero Company in a conspiracy intertwined with the Clone Wars. The game successfully captures the atmosphere of being a background player in a galaxy-spanning conflict, with squad members holding diverse allegiances that influence their actions and perspectives. This friction between personal motivations and the larger war becomes a central theme, with the story depicting a slow descent into fascism with notable poignancy.
Dialogue is characterized by sharp wit and concise delivery, blending acerbic humor with thoughtful observations. News briefings and character interactions highlight the political machinations and propaganda of the era, contrasting the Republic's idealized image with the experiences of those affected by its occupation. This approach offers a nuanced perspective on the Republic's institutional flaws, which stands in contrast to more Jedi-centric narratives.
Despite its narrative strengths and engaging tactical gameplay, Star Wars Zero Company experiences technical issues, particularly on PC. These include stuttering frame rates, slow enemy turn loads, and mid-mission freezes that can result in significant progress loss. The Overwatch mode is also noted as inconsistent due to an unreliable line-of-sight system, which can frustrate players when tactical plans are thwarted by geometry quirks. These rough edges, while not enough to ruin the experience, can be grating.
Star Wars Zero Company is scheduled for release on August 27, 2026, for PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X/S. The game was reviewed on Windows PC using a prerelease download code provided by Electronic Arts.