Star Wars Zero Company (2026) - An experience unlike any other ever in my life

 

Developer: Bit Reactor
Publisher: EA

        I have to say at first that I absolutely love turn-based tactical strategy games like XCOM, Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions (which is the best FF game), Fire Emblem, WH40K: Chaos Gate (the original and the remake), and many others. Despite my rocky relationship with the Star Wars franchise, which I have long given up on (The Force Awakens was 11 years ago, dear lord…), from the previews and trailers, this looked like something right up my alley. It has unit progression, base management, tactical turn-based combat, and, okay, so it is set in the Clone Wars, which is my second-most-favorite era in this universe. So, avoiding comparisons with XCOM is impossible, and I, for one, believe that even the developers wanted the comparisons themselves, since the name of this game (ZCOM) can't be a coincidence.

        Immediately, I was hit by the abysmal performance. I got this game for PC, started playing, and despite the fact that I was really enjoying the story and characters (which shocked me the most), the constant stuttering, crashing, freezes, and overall state of being unplayable forced me to refund the game. I mean, what was I expecting? It's another UE5 nightmare. I slept on it, and the next day I decided to get it on my PS5. It was more expensive, but something about this game really drew me in. So, I got it and started playing. I was horrified to find that the performance on the PS5 was only slightly better than on PC, even though the stability was better (over my 18-hour playthrough, I crashed only 5 times).

        The setting is very familiar to me, and despite my reluctance, Star Wars still pulls on my heartstrings, especially when the music swoons and the hairs on my arms stand up. The story started very well and remained gripping for the 18 hours that I played. It kept developing, there were interesting twists and turns, and overall, I was shocked by how little it was full of tropes and boring clichés, which is something this franchise has become filled with over the past decade and more.

        Most of the characters were very well done and interesting. The new cast is great. Hawks feels like the best combination of Mal Reynolds/Han Solo, Trick has a personality apart from the usual “I am a clone,” the Mandalorian is a bit dry but has excellent charm and humor, and the rest are great too. I was surprised by how many times I heard DC Douglas in this game, but, as always, he is a master of his craft and it was great to hear his voice. There is one familiar face that appears in the middle of the playthrough, and if you saw any trailers for this game, you know who that is. I was let down, however, that even though he was voiced by one of my favorite actors, Matt Lanter, he was made to look like the movie version, not the TV show version, which was just awkward. Yes, obviously I am talking about Anakin.

        Well, to start with some of the negatives, the user interface is horrible. Nothing is clear, it is all confusing and hard to read, and trying to discern which ability does what without reading tooltips is impossible. In XCOM (any of them), you can look at the icon and know immediately which is what. Whenever you have to play with any sort of elevation (roofs, hills, etc.), it is very difficult to order your units around without messing up.

         The flow of the combat itself is also not very good. It is very slow. And you cannot skip or speed up any of the animations, which take forever. I was missing XCOM 2's zip mode after one hour of playing.

        There are sections where the game suddenly switches into a third-person, over-the-shoulder perspective, and you are supposed to explore and look around, but it's all just a hallway with nothing interesting in it, and I wish these sections were just remade as quick cutscenes. They only grind the already slow game to a halt. Once again, you cannot skip, you cannot make things move faster. If you play turn-based tactical strategy games for the gameplay (which I mean, come on), then these are not high on the list of priorities.

        So, XCOM is great because you can play it 10 times and every time you will encounter something new. ZCOM has every level handcrafted, which means there is very little random generation and you will barely see anything new. I played missions on 6 different planets and they all seemed like they were on the same one. The story also remains the same throughout playthroughs. No branching choices or decisions. The characters play the same too, although, to be fair, you can change their specialization, but their core talent remains the same. Which means, that after you play this game once, you have seen almost everything there is to see. Furthermore, there is very little incentive to use different units because there is no fatigue mechanic. Let me explain.

        In XCOM (and others), units have morale, which decreases every time they take part in battle, which forces you to rotate squads and effectively means you cannot use the same units all the time. There is no such thing in ZCOM. The only reason why you would use someone else rather than the same four units is injuries (which you gain every time a character is downed). Which I never received in combat. I got injuries in some of the non-combat missions, but that happened only twice. This brings me to my other point.

        I started this game on Normal, with Ironman mode and Permadeath enabled. And the game is too easy! It was extremely boring. Every turn, my units would do the same thing, and it just became a slog to get through. After about 10 hours, I switched to Hard, and the game became much more enjoyable. I actually had to think and use different tactics, but I still only ever used the same four units while everyone else was chilling back at base. Ironman mode means you are only playing on one save file, cannot save manually, and can only ever reload that one save.

        Also, as if they were more inspired by Fire Emblem than XCOM, there is very little point to using custom characters. In ZCOM, you get 7 hero units who have their own looks, voices, abilities, and, of course, play a huge part in the story. You can also create 13 other custom characters, including little R2-D2 copies. There is no point in any of these, since the game has the maximum squad size set strictly to four (not upgradeable), so you don't ever even use the other 3 story hero units, let alone the other 13 custom characters.

        This game also has an obligatory timer for its campaign, and I just have to wonder why? There was a similar mechanic in XCOM 2 and, if I remember correctly, nobody liked it there. When Firaxis launched the expansion War of the Chosen, they reworked the timer so that you could just safely ignore it and play the game at your own pace. So, why are we going back to this?

        I was in Chapter 9 (out of 14), playing a mission during which you are supposed to get into a spaceport, get some data from a console, and then retreat back to the beginning of the mission. Meanwhile, there is a slow-moving red area behind you that is bombarded every turn by off-screen “ships,” and you do not want to be caught in it because it will damage your units.

        So, what happened was that there was an enemy unit that had a reaction to getting hit by my Hawks. This reaction was called “drain,” which meant that effectively the enemy ran over half the map straight to my guy, sucked out all his action points, and stunned him for a turn. I was worried. The red zone where the ships would fire each turn was coming closer, but I still had at least 1 more turn, since Hawks was stunned well outside this red zone. He would have to move out next turn. I could do it, sure, it would be hairy, but not impossible.

        So, I ended my turn.

        The off-screen ships fired, the red zone behind my party exploded, I got an achievement, and a giant GAME OVER screen appeared. I could only press X, which booted the game back to the main menu, and I only had the option to start a new game. My entire campaign progress was gone, and there was nothing more to do.

        I nodded my head, ejected the disc from my PS5, repackaged it, and went to return it to the store. Later, I looked it up, and I was not the only one who had this bug happen to them. The developer's response to this issue was “to not play on Ironman mode and reload a previous save.”

        Well, that's useless.

        Nothing like this ever happened to me, ever. I could not finish this game (twice!) from beginning to end. I believe a zero out of ten is for something that just does not function, does not work. Even the worst game gets at least 1 point.

        In the end, it is very poetic that Zero Company gets 0/10 from me. Hell, at least I can use the money to buy the upcoming Blood of Dawnwalker.