I’ve never played the wildly popular XCOM series, but despite my lack of experience with those games, when Bit Reactor, a studio founded by former Firaxis Games and XCOM veterans, announced its first project was a Star Wars game, I was keen to see what they had in store. Star Wars Zero Company is a turn-based tactics (TBT) strategy game, and I’ve recently been playing a preview build of the game, specifically the first “18 cycles” that resulted in more than 15 hours of gameplay, and so far, I’m very impressed.
Zero Company is set in 20BBY during the Clone Wars, which game director Greg Foertsch said during the preview event’s presentation “was the perfect fit for us,” and after my time hands-on with the game, I have to agree. The characters, story, and overall atmosphere of the game have a strong Star Wars authenticity that feels very gritty and grounded in this time period; it almost feels like a story arc pulled straight from The Clone Wars animated series.
The player character is Hawks, an interesting sort and former captain in the Grand Army of the Republic, who now leads Zero Company. Hawks is a clever and decisive leader with a checkered past who’s just looking to finish the job and get paid, until Republic Intelligence offers them a gig: an opportunity not only to make a ton of credits, but also to take down a sinister threat known as The Infinite Coil, led by Kundri Fathom.
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The Coil is a Separatist-aligned, paramilitary cult infected with the Shadow Plague, a mysterious disease that grants unnatural resilience and deadly abilities and which preys on vulnerable populations across Republic worlds to spread their plague and grow their ranks.
Building Zero Company, gathering intel, and intercepting The Coil is the primary mission early on, and it was a gradual buildup as I took on separate tactical missions across the galaxy. The cult is an intriguing and distinctive threat that feels original enough to create a compelling storyline around, and I’m eager to dive deeper into it, especially since I stopped playing just when events started getting really exciting. I won’t get into spoilers, but if you’ve seen the trailer, you’ll know that Anakin Skywalker plays a role in this game, and I can’t wait to continue playing to find out more.
This is where the fun begins
As the story progresses, authored heroes, such as Ore-Baroness Jae Mordant, the Mandalorian bounty hunter Cly Kullervo, the Jedi Padawan Tel-Rea Vokoss, and more, will join Zero Company. But besides these Operators, the game deepens its player freedom with a system that lets you hire additional Operators via the Recruitment Facility.
These Operators can be defined by the player in a separate character creator in the main menu, where you have access to a broader range of Star Wars species to choose from, and I had a great time spending a few creative hours designing my very own band of Clone Troopers, each with unique looks, builds, and backstories that I could later add to my team.
Customization is plentiful in Zero Company, and there are many options at your disposal when designing your own version of Hawks — I definitely spent too long creating mine — whether that be a human, Mirialan, Twi’lek, Togruta, Devaronian, or Zabrak. But it’s not just appearances that matter. Specializations, which include Assault, Gunslinger, Heavy, Medic, Scoundrel, Scout, Sharpshooter, and Soldier, each have specific Talents, which can result in very different playthroughs depending on your build.
Tactical gameplay is extremely satisfying and heavily reliant on calculating your next move. Each character has three Action Points (AP) per turn, so you can’t just go in all guns blazing and expect a successful outcome; missions can take a while to complete for this reason, but the learning curve is so rewarding when all the pieces perfectly fall into place.
I also hugely enjoyed the game’s permadeath mode, which means Operators can permanently die if they suffer three injuries. With this mode on, I had to think ahead and chose to give my Hawks the Medic specialization for that extra sense of security. I’m usually a coward when this feature is in other games, but I was drawn to it when Bit Reactor explained it was the “intended” way to play; this is Star Wars, so the feature makes the risks of losing companions during wartime more realistic.
I played plenty of tactical missions, the core of Zero Company‘s gameplay, all with varying objectives and threat levels, and permadeath mode definitely upped the stakes and forced me to plan how I was going to spend my squad’s three AP more strategically.
One of my favorite actions is Overwatch, which lets Operators automatically attack enemies that walk within their zones; whenever the HUD alerted me that enemy reinforcements were incoming, I would tactfully set up my Operators to target those areas with Overwatch, ambushing them and negating any first-turn moves.
There are also many team compositions you can come up with and I had a ton of fun experimenting with this, with my favorite loadout early on being Hawks, Trick, Jae, and Tel-Rea; I equipped my Hawks with a longarm blaster, and with Overwatch enabled, I would pick off any stragglers as I sent Tel sweeping forward to deliver heavy hits with her lightsaber or Force abilities and Jae’s Final Shot talent would finish them off with one shot.
I also dabbled in the Scoundrel spec before my preview time ran out, which felt vastly different from Medic, and I already know I’m going to want to experiment with the rest when the game releases.
Good soldiers follow orders
The Den is Zero Company’s base of operations on the Ring of Kafrene (shoutout Rogue One) and is where you plot your next incursions on the huge Galaxy Map, gather vital currencies like Intel, Credits, and Influence in exchange for game-changing gear, upgrade facilities that have a lasting impact on missions, and recruit and outfit Operators.
Outside of tactical missions, the camera perspective shifts from the isometric overview to third-person, which I appreciated a lot because it brought a more personal touch to the experience as you regularly check in, get to know Operators, and learn their perspectives on unfolding events.
The Bond system is another very cool feature that really drove home the sense of camaraderie you have with your fellow Operators and instilled the importance of strategy. While not unlike an approval meter, each pair of Operators, whether that be Hawks and Trick, or Trick and Jae, begins with an initial relationship, typically neutral or negative, and stronger Bonds, which can also be tested outside of combat, can result in consequences, as well as new talents, focus points to upgrade skill trees, training sessions to gain a permanent stat bonus, and a secondary specialization that you can unlock.
This system is essentially the key to successful missions. Trick was a personal favorite during my session, and I frequently included him on my teams, not only because he’s an interesting character I want to become my Hawks’ best friend, but because his Hero Talent — which lets him withstand getting Downed and can automatically revive during the next turn in battle — blended really well with my Hawks’ Medic specialization.
Playing with permadeath enabled almost made the risk greater, and so I used my Medic skills to bolster Trick further. Similarly, Tel-Rea has Jedi Force abilities at her disposal, and while she can deliver some powerful attacks and has a Hero Talent that allows her to improve lightsaber deflection and attack damage, she can be a bit spongy against melee enemies; therefore, keeping her from getting injured was beneficial not just for a successful mission, but for building Bonds.
Some Star Wars fans who have never played a TBT game might feel put off from trying out Zero Company, so the question is: Can fans unfamiliar with the TBT genre still enjoy this game? I would say absolutely!
As a massive Star Wars fan and someone who enjoys TBT but has never played XCOM, Zero Company easily made me familiar with the mechanics and, so far, offers a cohesive experience that combines the joy of Star Wars storytelling with compelling tactical gameplay.
I have a really bad feeling about this
While I didn’t experience any game-breaking bugs or crashes during my session on PC, a few enemy AI hiccups being the exception, I did come across performance snags that hindered my experience in some places. But it’s worth mentioning that Bit Reactor informed us that the preview build wasn’t the final product and it’s still finalizing the game.
The first few hours of play went by smoothly; I was hitting 60 frames per second (fps) at high settings in gameplay on my mid-to-high-range build with an Nvidia RTX 3060Ti graphics card and Ryzen 7 5700X 8-Core processor, which is way above the minimum specs, with the odd dip during cinematics, but nothing too major.
However, once I reached the planet Courtsilius, a very visually demanding area where I had my first real run-in with The Coil, my performance took a drastic turn. From there, cinematics were struggling in the 20 to 30fps range, while gameplay, whether that be walking around The Den or playing tactical missions, ranged between 30 and 40fps.
It was particularly noticeable during hyperspace loading screens, where screen tearing is terrible, on the aforementioned planet, and on a few others like Bespin, but frame rates strangely improved on planets like Lothal, whether it was due to a less populated and detailed environment, I can’t be sure.
Zero Company looks terrific all around; characters and isometric maps look stunning, no matter the graphics preset. However, I had to spend a fair bit of time testing different settings and couldn’t find a solution that gave me the best balance between good picture quality and smooth performance. That’s with Nvidia’s DLSS and Reflex enabled and boosted, adjusting graphics options to low and medium settings, and tweaking resolutions.
If Bit Reactor can overcome these stability and performance issues and keep me hooked with its story and addictive gameplay, I think Zero Company could be a real hit of 2026. Star Wars Zero Company launches on August 27 for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S.
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