Star Wars: Zero Company was provided by EA for review. Thank you!
Star Wars: Zero Company was a big surprise to someone with no emotional investment in the Star Wars universe, in that I enjoyed myself. That is partly because I like turn-based strategy and partly because I had fun with the characters and setting. While it is not a game I can recommend for the Steam Deck right now due to performance and technical issues, Zero Company is pretty damn compelling.
I believe it is safe to say that we have had little luck with Star Wars in the last decade, and video games are no exception. Jedi: Fallen Order was decent enough, but Survivor had a brutal launch with technical issues, and Star Wars Outlaws also had a rough start, though patches did improve that game. I had my doubts about Star Wars: Zero Company when it launched, but it took me by pleasant surprise.
If you have played anything XCOM-like, Star Wars: Zero Company will make you feel right at home, although it is considerably less punishing. Turn-based combat is the name of the game, blended with some decent story beats and the kind of gameplay I usually dig. Players take on the role of Hawk, a distrusting and struggling mercenary captain on hard times, with his company in debt to what I nicknamed ‘Discount Jabba’. While the Star Wars universe is embroiled in its usual Republic war shenanigans, Zero Company is on the fringes of that as Hawk battles a cabal known as the Mortal Coil. The story, while nothing to write home about, was enough to keep my interest.
I ended up surprisingly attached to my little crew of characters, who have a good range of personalities and felt real to interact with. Runa started as somebody I despised on principle for being our resident accountant with a gigantic stick up her arse, but over time she grew on me. My favorite character overall is Hawk himself, and all this is helped by the great voice acting with fully mocapped cutscenes.
The early story takes you into a solid tutorial to learn the ropes of the core combat and base management, as well as teaching the dangers of overreach by killing off one of the cast immediately. I liked the guy and couldn’t save him, but it’s a great way of showing the consequences of your actions. Screw up, especially on permadeath, and your crew members might be lost forever!
Unlike many games I’ve played where permadeath doesn’t really impact much about the narrative, Zero Company bucks that trend in that the story accounts for missing characters, and things do change. It’s still weird how few games in 2026 have consequences for your actions. I recommend playing on greater difficulties for this reason, as Zero Company needs a little work on the balance.
Seeing how developer Bit Reactor contains many of the people behind the XCOM games, Zero Company is essentially XCOM with a fresh coat of paint. That is a good thing, and I’ve had a blast during combat. Different operators have different abilities, with plenty of customization and weapons to unlock. I like combat systems that let me tailor units to my needs, and Zero Company does a solid job of that.
Squad members have a backup mechanic where they call on each other for assistance when attacking an enemy, which also boosts their relationship. Missions in combat usually involve dealing with waves of enemies as their reinforcements arrive, or safely evacuating after achieving a goal. The variety of missions isn’t amazing, but it does the job.
Unlike XCOM, you don’t just drop into a battle map, and usually you’ll explore an area before fighting. For example, one of the early missions is to eavesdrop on smugglers, taking you through a rough borough of seedy dockworkers. It is a good way to do some worldbuilding and set the scene, although I wish Zero Company did more with these sequences. These exploration sections feel more like corridors of environmental storytelling than active hubs that expand gameplay, and I would have preferred some side quests to improve the transitions. Not bad, but could use some fine-tuning to make these segments more exciting.
Between missions, players return to the Den, Hawk’s little headquarters that is the base of operations. There, you get to rest up, check on companions, buy new equipment, upgrade facilities, and the usual management stuff that you might expect from XCOM. I really liked these cooldown times, as they provide the juxtaposition between frantic combat and downtime that many games excel at.
I’m thinking games like Persona with its life sim/dungeon crawl gameplay, the recent launch of Pax Autocratica with base building and roguelike squad combat, and of course XCOM with base management and the turn-based missions. Magic often happens even when two separate genres might not be the most refined by themselves, but work well together. That is certainly the case with Star Wars: Zero Company.
While I enjoyed the core game plenty, there are some rough edges that hold Zero Company back from being truly great. The difficulty is a bit all over the place, and while some missions offer plenty of curveballs that make me think carefully about how to get my squad out alive, it is fairly easy to make your team insanely powerful. I recommend playing on hard mode, and permadeath turned on to make the most of the intended experience.
The main criticism I have for the game is, unfortunately, its technical side; I experienced my fair share of bugs, crashes, and quest softlocks. Most of these were minor, and the quest locks, while annoying, were solvable by reloading a save in most cases. The worst-case scenario was me having to restart a mission from scratch. There have been a couple of patches since launch, but with Bit Reactor’s team furloughed after release, long-term support for Zero Company is a concern.
Star Wars: Zero Company is rated Unsupported for the Steam Deck, with ProtonDB giving it a Platinum Rating. Even though the game boots on the Deck, it doesn't perform well.
On launch, our main man Noah gave his impressions of the Steam Deck performance with some very disappointing results. We have only seen a couple of patches for the game since launch, so I was hoping for at least playable framerates in a pinch. Unfortunately, however, Zero Company is just not a pick for the Deck right now, and I found Noah’s assessment wholly accurate. There’s just no realistic way of making the game playable on the dated Steam Deck chip.
Given the steep system requirements, this was no big surprise to me, but it is a shame nonetheless. Play Zero Company elsewhere.
Star Wars: Zero Company is available in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, and Portuguese. Full audio is only available in English and German, however.
The game offers a wide range of accessibility settings that go above and beyond what is typical for a turn-based tactics game. There is full-screen colorblind filter support, extra-large text options, controller and keybind remapping, subtitle adjustments, including text-to-speech, a stabilizing dot to help with motion sickness, and four difficulty levels, with the option to disable permadeath. There’s a lot in here, and full credit to Bit Reactor for its excellent accessibility options.
Star Wars: Zero Company took me by pleasant surprise, which is the best kind of surprise in life. While I wasn’t expecting the game to be bad by any means, most things to do with Star Wars in recent years have made fans curl up and sob in a corner. Zero Company is the kind of game where you can tell it has been built with love and care, and despite some difficulty gripes and some unfortunate technical hiccups, I’ve had a lot of fun playing..
Between the solid core gameplay, decent writing, and surprisingly likable characters, Star Wars: Zero Company is a good pick for strategy fans. Just don’t expect to play this on the Steam Deck any time soon.
Our review is based on the PC version of this game.
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Star Wars: Zero Company is a buggy yet surprisingly captivating RPG with some great combat. Do not play this on the Steam Deck, though.
