Star Wars: Zero Company will be available for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Windows from August 27, 2026.. For PC, it can be purchase through Steam, the EA App, and the Epic Games Store.
Synopsis
Star Wars Zero Company is the new single player, turn based tactical strategy game from Electronic Arts, developed with Bit Reactor. Releasing on August 27th on PC, Playstation 5 and XBOX Series X|S
Set during the twilight of the Clone Wars, Star Wars: Zero Company follows a disgraced former Republic officer turned mercenary who leads an off-the-books squad against a shadowy Separatist cult.
Review
I have to confess, I am more a Star Wars fan, than I am a fan of games with turn based tactical combat – that being said, that is no barrier to accessing this game and fans of XCOM and similar strategy based combat games will undoubtedly find this an easy game to pick up, guiding Zero Company across the galaxy, positioning, attacking, and using overwatch to navigate your way through the clone wars, one battle at a time, via a system of action points.
What stands out for me personally is the story. Star Wars: Zero Company it’s set to the backdrop of the Clone Wars, you play as Hawks, a mercenary with personal history with the Republic, who’s leading a ragtag unconventional gang of uneasy allies for hire as they fight against the Infinite Coil, a Separatist aligned cult of the Dark Side, who are threatening the galaxy with a “Shadow Plague”
Often story beats take place behind the scenes of major galactic events, providing a solid familiarity for Star Wars fans and giving an expansive feel to the game, as it borrows scale from these known events.
Zero Company themselves, start the game indebted to the Hutt’s, struggling to stay afloat and taking jobs purely to pay off the 80k owed to the galactic crime overlords.
Antagonist group, the Infinite Coil are new to Star Wars, led by charismatic strategist Kundri Fathom, voiced by Rekha Sharma from Star Trek Discovery and Battle Star Galactica, the cult is unleashing a dark-side phenomenon known as the Shadow Plague and spreading destructive ideology battle-by-battle. There’s a real menace to the group, who feel relatively unique, without being galaxy breaking.
There’s a fabulous thematic re-skinning of classes, standards such as gunslinger, medic, etc, are still on offer, but also, more Star Wars specifics feature as custom operatives,
you can navigate Clone Troopers, Mandalorians and Jedi Padawans across the battlefield, all bringing their own unique sets of attributes and skills.
I also really enjoyed the customisation at the start of the game, being able to make Hawks different species and gender and choosing from a wide array of different clothing and accessory options to give *your* Hawks, their own distinct feel and look, is a lovely touch that immediately makes you buy in that little bit more.
Customisation in the game is a continuing theme, later you will be invited to recruit more operatives to you group, these are randomly generated, but all have the same kind of customisation on offer, making for a more personal and immersive experience, something I wasn’t expecting with this game.
Customisation isn’t limited to characters, in fact, I quite enjoyed giving all my weaponry a variety of customised paint jobs.
As someone not familiar with turn based strategy games, I found the tutorial very well done, easily understandable and accessible, explaining the basics as you go, taking you from scruffy looking nerf herder to Grand Admiral levels of tactical nous in no time! It was really simplistic but satisfying.
Something I found compelling was the dynamics and jeopardy of the game – if you lose a member of Zero Company in the game, they aren’t coming back. You can spend a lot of time crafting your relationships with members, just for them not to make it out alive, which isn’t something I’ve experienced before in a game in quite the same way.
Although we are traversing from one battle to another, everything feels strongly player driven, not on rails.
Missions vary in length, some feel short, sharp and simple – then back to base, while others feel like slogs where you’re lucky to escape with your lives, that dynamism and stepping into the unknown for each conflict, keeps the game fresh and means that the battles never feel arbitrary.
As someone unfamiliar with the genre I was surprised at the depth of the game, to the point where I found it was somewhat overwhelming.
It isn’t a case of simply jumping from one battle to another, there’s a home base area, where a lot of the story/nuance between characters unfolds diegetically between missions. In this area you also build up your characters interpersonal relationships, again unfolding pieces of story in the process.
Every playable character has a skills tree that you need to keep updated and on top of and weapons to be upgraded, then there are territorial maps where you can look to gain more influence and even an area where you can recruit more operatives to your missions, it’s a lot if you’re a new player like me, but I will say, that much like with the tutorial, this stuff is all spoon-fed to the player slowly and that it is maybe just as much a failure on my part to pick up these factors quickly, as it is there being so much to contend with.
Tonally, Star Wars: Zero Company *feels* very much like a Star Wars story. There are some great performances in the game and they manage to nail that silly campy Star Wars humour and weirdness, without ever undercutting the seriousness of it being a game about conflict and war.
While the customisation aspect means everyone’s Hawks is visually different, Bit Reactor and EA have carefully crafted a characterisation that is grounded, he is cynical with a weathered dry humour that had me chuckling regularly. Similarly, crew member Kabb’s interesting linguistic choices were very Star Wars, silly and fun and weird, without ever breaking the immersion.
These and many more carefully collated creations and performances means that Star Wars: Zero company moves beyond being just a XCOM reskin and becomes a gritty and grounded, living breathing part of Star Wars lore full of humour, mysticism and Force-fuelled fun.
The biggest compliment I can pay Star Wars: Zero Company is that despite not being a player of strategy games, before this- Star Wars: Zero Company was so accessible and enjoyable, that I’m bound to carry on playing it to completion. It’s opened my eyes to a whole different genre of game.
Verdict
Perfect for first time players of turn based strategy games, Star Wars: Zero Company will please fans of the genre old and new, while expanding Star Wars lore, upholding the qualities that quintessentially make Star Wars and introducing interesting new enemies and concepts too.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
