Star Wars Zero Company is a tight, tactical adventure with roguish charm

In recent years, the Star Wars franchise has grown considerably, leaving room for explorations of its wider galaxy. Away from the Skywalkers and other prominent Jedi, there’s an incredibly rich and layered world to investigate, filled with all sorts of neat and novel lore.

Star Wars Zero Company offers a fresh take on the Star Wars universe, with a strong sense of familiarity for those who love the turn-based and tactical strategy genre.

Striking a similar tone to the excellent Skeleton Crew, a Disney+ series that skirted the mythology of the Jedi while exploring the nature of life and survival in this strange world, Star Wars Zero Company is a tighter and more grounded story.

While it still encompasses the full scope of the Star Wars universe – and yes, Jedi become part of the action eventually – this is a human-led tale, and the focus on a crew of outlaw fighters lends it charm.

Its combat is also standout, leaning into XCOM-style tactics as players fight their way through various missions, striving to make a name for Zero Company while shedding the burden of their debts.

Choice guides your hand as Zero Company strikes out

Star Wars Zero Company follows the exploits of Zero Company and its leader, Hawks, a player-customisable hero and pseudo-Texan cowboy with a deep and dark backstory that slowly unravels. As a former officer of the Republic, Hawks’ position as an off-sided and rebellious fighter is made far more interesting.

He (or she, depending on player choice) has ties to the Republic that are so rarely explored in Star Wars, adding layers of grey to the good versus evil narrative. This is a more considered take on the organisation than we’ve seen before, with Hawks’ history playing into his meetings with the Republic, and where he steers Zero Company.

That steering is also partially the responsibility of players, with choice dogging all of Hawks’ forays into this world.

As mentioned, Star Wars Zero Company will be familiar to turn-based strategy game players. It’ll be particularly familiar to those who’ve checked out Marvel’s Midnight Suns, with which it has plenty in common.

In this game, you operate from a spaceship hub where you make decisions about missions and operations, who’s part of your crew, how to upgrade your base, and when to eventually set off on combat skirmishes.

You have a core crew of main heroes to fight alongside in Zero Company, with these defining the general direction of the plot and action. You can also recruit various other fighters to your cause, although they are typically less powerful in general, and feel more expendable.

Permadeath is a major feature of this game, so you’ll need to think carefully in battles and make sure you’re looking after everyone on your crew to keep them happy, healthy and off the permanent memorial board in the main bay.

That all comes down to careful strategy, as operations in Star Wars Zero Company require a focus and finesse to ensure success. Again, this process will be familiar to many players, as Zero Company leans into the popular gameplay and common tropes of the tactical genre.

Fighting for the future of the galaxy

Taking on various operations with your motley crew, you’ll need to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of everyone on board, balancing them to create a coherent team.

Leader Hawks can be equipped as players choose, but mine was a long-range sniper specialist so I spent time finding the perfect positions on the battlefield to pull off bullseye shots from a distance while keeping away from any threats.

I usually paired him with a cute little drone capable of boosting the amount of turns per character and equipped with an arsenal of bombs, two bruisers with strong uppercuts for high melee damage, and a Jedi warrior with useful Force Push powers to send enemies flying (or down steep embankments, to their doom).

The mix depends on the mission type and requirements, and you’ll occasionally need to take a particular hero with you. But for the most part, this system is very flexible. You can shape combat as you wish, and see the consequences of your choices play out as droids, droidekas, and other human enemies flood the battlefield to threaten your dominance.

Turns play out in a way where you can really sit and think about what’s next. How best to use ranged and melee shots to the full extent of your crew’s abilities. How to rescue hostages and get out without a scratch. When to fight, and when to flee. It’s a sandbox for combat, and one that tickles the mind.

For those players who love a puzzle box, working out how each mission will conclude is part of the fun as you twist and turn to find the right combination of attacks for victory.

A compelling story weaves through the game’s slower parts

A standout combat system still needs impetus for its fights, and with a slowly unravelling story of wild beats, there are always reasons to forge on.

In parts, the game’s narrative is slower moving. It has a linear pace and you’ll often be required to sit back and take on smaller quests or missions while you bide time and wait for what happens next. There are lulls in these gaps, and unless you really get invested in the personal stories and dialogue of your companions, you may find the pacing feels a bit like filler.

But the core of the main story remains strong and compelling – it concerns a psychic and physical plague imbued by a cult-like leader – and Hawks is a layered protagonist to build on, with that all-important dark past to evoke in moments of high tension.

A string of interesting characters, added to your team with new narrative twists, also offers consistent new ways to tackle combat, so you’re constantly striving to improve your crew and their bonds, figure out loyalties and hidden secrets, and discover exactly what’s happening in this branch of the universe.

Teases of connections to the rest of the Star Wars world, and the events of the historic in-universe Clone Wars (which plays out in the background of the action) amps up a sense of drama here – with the added benefit that characters being original means that anything can happen.

This is new territory for the series, told well.

Against this backdrop, Star Wars Zero Company plays out as a worthy new chapter in the world of Star Wars.

It’s not necessarily essential, and the nature of its recruitment means that some characters feel generic and expendable by nature, but it remains a fun and very strategic experience all the same, with its combat being standout.

A PC code for Star Wars Zero Company was provided by the publisher and played for the purposes of this review.

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