Star Wars Zero Company Hands-On: Tactics, Lore and the Den

A Galaxy of Strategy and Story

The galaxy far, far away has long been a playground for strategy games, yet Star Wars has only seen a handful of them over the years. Bit Reactor, founded by veterans from XCOM, XCOM 2, and Marvel's Midnight Suns, aims to change that with its debut title. The game features a story-driven approach, set around 20 BBY, near the end of the destiny-changing Clone Wars. You play as Hawks, a former Republic officer now leading a squad of mercenaries looking to get out of debt from the brutal Hutt family.

When the so-called Zero Company is recruited for a lucrative operation, they quickly find themselves in a plot involving the Infinite Coil, a deadly Separatist-aligned cult rumored to possess abilities some consider unnatural. The game's turn-based tactics system allows you to engage with the legendary Clone Wars in a new way, offering deep strategic choices and immersive storytelling.

Character Creation and Squad Management

The character creation menu before starting the game fully seals the deal on Star Wars credentials. A large selection of races, from human and Torgruta to Weequay and Twi'lek, can be extensively modified across facial details, body types, and outfits. Even their voice and dialogue is affected by which type of personality you choose for them, such as rogue, mentor, or professional.

Going a bit deeper, you can select your character's talent on the battlefield, including the ability to draw attacks, sabotage objects, or detonate them. Combat style specializations and weapon classes offer further customization: snipers can strap up with a longarm blaster, while Han Solo types might prefer a pistol. Astromechs can also be added to your unit as valuable support units that buff allies with AP (Action Points), providing opportunities for more activities on the field.

Expansive Battle Options

The bulk of Star Wars: Zero Company is spent on detailed and highly destructible arenas where protagonist Hawks and their band of Operatives have to achieve mission objectives while staying alive against a rival squad. AP is used to move, attack, or perform talents specific to class or character, such as a 100% accurate shot for sharpshooters or a party-wide stats buff.

There are also more generic options including the ability to use overwatch, where you can set an area of retaliation that will trigger an Operative attack if an enemy moves inside it. But while there are lots of different objectives, from rescuing an injured ally to blowing up a target object, there's a lot more to Star Wars: Zero Company than just its turn-based combat.

Exploration and the Den

Some areas allow you to walk around various hives of scum and villainy, letting you pick up clues and information from its environment and citizens. Particular conversations and investigations have binary choices for you to make, earning you occasional rewards and stat boosts which will play into another important layer of the game – the Den.

Acting as a hub for your Operatives, the Den is your home for campaigns, letting you chat to your squad, recruit new members, customize load-outs and appearances, buy weapon mods, and heal any injured teammates. Parts of the Den can be upgraded over time to enhance your utilities or offer more space as your team grows. You can even have a little strum on Hawks' guitar-like Marfaset.

But the real fun comes from the base's Holotable, where you can select which missions to dive into, whether it's campaign-driven or side quests, including character-specific tasks. The Holotable also gives you the option of non-combat Operations for gaining information or loot, which can lead to tricky narrative choices.

Bonds and Consequences

There are also Dilemmas where you have to make a choice that all your Operatives have an opinion on. Your decision affects a wider system where bonds between each Operative change based on whether you side with them during a Dilemma, if you partner them up to perform assists on the field, if they complete missions together, or if you decide to take up character-driven quests.

Good bonds earn Focus points to enhance an Operative's skills, as well as teaching each other passive abilities and unique tricks – although I enjoyed hearing them complement each other on their good shooting during a battle. Of course, there's a lot more hiding beneath Star Wars: Zero Company's Beskar-hardened surface, not least the amount of lore.

Tactical Tips for Tactics Padawans

Fit Check: Before you go out, give your squad a once-over in the prep screen, including checking their weapon mods, utility items, and spending any extra focus points they may have. A well-timed utility item or the edge from a weapon mod can make the difference in a tough battle, so it's always worth making sure everyone is properly equipped.

Consider All Your Options: Rather than taking each character's actions all in one go like the enemy AI does, remember that you can interleave individual action points between characters, and should often be doing so to get the most out of each turn. On any given turn, you should be clicking around between your whole squad and considering all the options available to you before committing to any actions.

Action Economy Is King: Speaking of playing for value, one standout theme that makes Star Wars: Zero Company play distinctly from its predecessors in the tactics space is the emphasis on various ways of generating additional action points above and beyond the 3 per turn that everyone starts with. At baseline, every turn one of your operators can call for a free assist; then various abilities grant additional actions to teammates directly.

Use Your Advantage: It can be tempting to sit on your Advantage points until you really need to use a big, expensive ability to get out of a jam. Just as often, though, you can avoid getting into tight situations in the first place by being aggressive and using Advantage frequently. It tops off at 10, so any damage that you do above and beyond that before spending Advantage is leaving money on the table.

Gravity Is Your Most Powerful Ally: Whether from a concussion grenade, a force push, or Kabb's uppercut, many different abilities can shove enemies around the map, so pay special mind to those. Because this is Star Wars, a lot of the maps feature bottomless voids and catwalks girded by flimsy guardrails. It doesn't matter how much health an enemy has when they're falling off the edge of a cloud city – even if they somehow survive, they're no longer your problem.

Plan Your Exit: While some missions involve defeating every enemy on the map, many others require getting your whole team to an extraction zone, with new threats appearing until you do. Keep this in mind, because you don't want to get caught out barely finishing an objective and then overwhelmed trying to make it back across the whole map as more droids drop in.

A Galaxy of Surprises

Early missions feature a monocle-wearing Gorga the Hutt and references to the Black Sun Syndicate, while later on… well, let's just say if you're familiar with the Clone Wars era you won't be disappointed by some of the significant events and brutal characters you'll come across. And that's not even getting into when Jedi join your party.

Start crafting your favorite blaster load-outs when Star Wars: Zero Company launches on PS5 tomorrow, August 27. The game is also available on Xbox Series X|S, offering a fantastic, story-forward use of the beloved Star Wars setting that will likely bring in a lot of players new to tactics games.