These days, rare is the game that fills me with childish joy. Not only at the prospect of its arrival, but also during gameplay. Not even the big hitters like GTA 6 and Modern Warfare, titles that I used to love beyond reckoning, are capable of capturing that primal feeling that everything is fine with games after all. I’m glad to say that Star Wars Zero Company, one of my most anticipated games of 2026, not only managed to do that the first time around, but also continues to. This is my review of Star Wars Zero Company.

You are Hawks, a former Galactic Republic captain who becomes the mercenary leader of Zero Company. The game starts with the whole operation facing dire straits, being heavily in debt to Gorga the Hutt, until the outfit is approached by the Republic with a lucrative contract to investigate a dangerous independent Separatist-aligned cult called The Infinite Coil, led by Kundri Fathom. The mission is to track down Fathom and neutralize the Coil before things escalate to the point that it becomes a galaxy-wide threat.

Let’s get the basics first: Star Wars Zero Company is a turn-based strategy game that follows the XCOM formula very closely, and plays it safe. That’s very obvious, long before you have the chance to dive into the weeds of the game’s combat, were it not for the fact that the game was developed by a team of XCOM, XCOM 2, and Marvel’s Midnight Suns veterans. While I often praise games that don’t shy away from innovation, the decision to stay close to what people know and love was the correct one.

The game’s divided between several sections: Your base, where players will be doing all the necessary management of Zero Company; The turn-based battles; And some third-person combat exploration in the main quests. Let’s dissect each of the aspects in further detail.

Starting with the base, I do love the fact that the base isn’t just a series of menus, but that you can walk about in-between missions, and talk to your companions and learn more about their backstories, and even make some dialogue choices that affect their affinity towards you. While this adds a ton of personality to your character and Zero Company, and waddling about in the base is always fun, I do feel that, despite being very reminiscent of the Abbey from Midnight Suns, a lot more could have been done, and the base acts more as an interactive menu that I can see losing a bit of its charm and novelty the second or third playthrough. There could have been more exploration, secrets to uncover, more dialogue options and consequences, and a ton of fun cosmetics to collect. I know that The Abbey wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea in Marvel’s Midnight Suns, but for me it was the most memorable aspect of the game, and I still remember fondly the exploration and side-quests it featured.

The game puts players in charge of Zero Company, and in the role of their leader, so it’s only natural that you’re tasked with managing every aspect of your mercenary outfit. It’s at your base that you’ll be able to hire new soldiers, equip them with weapons and utilities, level them up, and change their appearance. Your base also goes through a similar progression, with new upgrades being unlocked every time you move a bit forward in the story. So far, all very similar to XCOM. In fact, research aside (which is clumped up with base upgrading), everything else plays exactly as you have come to expect. I have nothing to fault in the game’s progression.

The turn-based combat is where the true meat and potatoes of the gameplay truly lies, and where you’ll probably spend most of your time while playing it. Each character has 3 action points instead of the regular 2, something that was first done by Gears Tactics, but if in Gears it served the purpose of making the game faster-paced and more aggressive, in Zero Company this extra action point will be more often than not spent on utilities and skills, or it will be kept in reserve for a potential overwatch after moving and firing. It’s not a major change that will have you rethinking the way you play Zero Company when compared to XCOM, but it’s certainly a lot more fun having the ability to do a bit more each and every turn.

Speaking of which, the game features and “Advantage” mechanic, a sort of resource that’s shared amongst your crew and is gained by damaging and killing enemies in combat. Powerful abilities require more Advantage to be used, while less impactful ones will use barely a couple of points. Again, does this change the way you play? Well, not really, especially since you have more action points available; chances are you’ll be gaining enough advantage to be constantly using said skills. I suspect that’s one of the reasons these skills also have a “per mission” use limit, so you won’t be spamming non-stop. The high-impact skills do require some extra planning, but during the course of my playtime, there wasn’t a single moment when I thought it was essential for mission completion, and I ended up just saving advantage for a couple of turns to use some spectacular for the fun of it.

If I am to fault a part of the combat, it would be the overreliance the game has on action-point donation between characters. Some turns can go on for a long time as it’s perfectly plausible to give your units double the action points they start the turn with, especially if you’re running a mech supporting your team. This leads me straight to the difficulty of the game. I have read some discourse online about how people were considering the game to be easy. I don’t think Star Wars Zero Company is an easy game. Given that I am not an MLG-pro gamer TM, saying that the game is extremely easy is just not true. In fact, if played in regular mode, it’s normal mode is a lot harder than XCOM, starting with the fact that some units are quite bullet spongy, and they come out in droves in some missions. The game also does that thing where it splits missions into parts and has your utility and ability usage carry over, so if you find yourself using one too many grenades in the first half and the game surprises you with a second one, good luck with that.

As for the maps, they’re relatively small and straightforward, and the same goes for mission objectives, which more often than not devolve into eliminating all targets, reaching a spot on the map and activating something, or going from point A to point B. In some missions, a couple of wrenches are thrown your way to deal with, but I won’t be spoiling them here; they’re a great addition, and the “bosses” are all fun to play against as well. If there’s one thing I would have liked to see, it would be a greater enemy variety. A couple of additions are made throughout the game, but with such a great galaxy to pull stuff from, it does feel a bit underwhelming. They are serviceable, and things won’t be getting boring, and this might be my Star Wars fried-brain overthinking it, but the Droid Army could have had so much more, and the introduction of stronger mechs could have been much more impactful, rather than having the player facing B2 and BX droids so early on.

In between each of the main missions, there are sections where the player and their squad can wander about, gathering clues and briefly exploring in third-person perspective. This is a very neat idea that’s unfortunately cut short because every section is nothing more than a linear walk until a fight breaks out, and it looks like the sort of thing the team had in mind to expand, and maybe even build around it, but it ends up falling rather short. These sections start out great, but end up feeling barren by the end of the game. It’s still cool to explore with your squad, but at least give the players a reason to do so.

Visually, Star Wars Zero Company is one of 2026’s standout titles. Every single model, animation, and particle is extremely high-quality, and the art style is perfect for Star Wars; as a massive Star Wars nerd, I haven’t found a single object that looked out of place during the course of the game. The settings and locations exude Star Wars; the enemies as well, and the cosmetics even more so. I love this game’s cosmetics and squad customization.

Almost every unit can be customized to your liking (yes, some more than others, as you’re somewhat limited with the main cast of characters, but they do have their very own cosmetics, so there’s that), and I have spent way more time than I care to admit playing around dress-up with my team. Zero Company allows players to change torso, arms, legs, hands, and head apparel. There are dozens of unique models to choose from, and as if that wasn’t enough, each one of those models can have its colours changed around to fit your liking. I know what you’re wondering: Can I make a squad of Clone Troopers? The answer is yes. Yes, you can. Even your mechs can be customized!

You can also customize your Captain Hawks to make him or her into your very own character. The only thing the game doesn’t allow you to change is the last name of the character.

The sound design is equally impressive, with guns sounding like their movie counterparts; the voice acting is overall amazing, with Captain Hawks’ performance being the highlight of the whole game. It’s absolutely stellar work on display by Jonathan Freeman – Every line of banter between Hawks and the crew, every snarky remark, and even in the more serious moments and emotional conversations, Freeman’s voice acting stands as the most memorable and charismatic. It also helps a lot that Captain Hawks is somewhat of a well-written and relatable character that doesn’t fall into the trappings of the usual smartass or dark, edgy merc company commander.

The game’s impressive visuals do come at a hefty cost. For PC, this game is not well optimized. Not in the slightest. I have a somewhat beefy rig, and one that should have no problem running Star Wars Zero Company at well above the 60 fps minimum, and I’m sad to report that rare were the moments when the game performed as I expected the game to. Frames oscillate constantly, ranging from the mid-100s to the mid-50s, making the whole experience quite jarring and inconsistent, especially when everything else is so well made. But the problems don’t end there. The game will block all sound for my entire PC for a couple of seconds every so often, only to come back and happen again some minutes later. As of the time of this writing, none of these problems have been fixed, and the game’s performance is still messy. If you have a low-end rig, I would honestly wait for a while before giving this a try.

I’m not sure how much of this lack of optimization is due to the fact that Bit Reactor furloughed roughly 80% of its staff just weeks before the game’s launch, leaving only a skeleton crew on active payroll to fix post-launch bugs. I don’t know how this situation will affect the game’s prospects of getting better any time soon, but I won’t be holding my breath that we will be seeing massive improvements any time soon. I do remain hopeful that the game sold well enough to justify a sequel, or at least a couple of extended DLCs adding more missions and characters.

Final Score: 9/10

When all is said and done, for all of its technical faults, Star Wars Zero Company is the best XCOM and XCOM 2 style of game that has been made in the last decade, and a generational experience for fans of the franchise. Not only that, but it’s one of the best Star Wars games ever made, second only, in my opinion, to Jedi: Fallen Order. It is, without a shadow of a doubt, the best Star Wars strategy game ever released, and I say this as a massive fan of Galactic Battlegrounds and Empire at War. If you love Star Wars, enjoy turn-based games, and your computer can handle the kind of heavy lifting Zero Company necessitates, chances are you’ll be having the time of your life playing this one over, and over, and over again. Star Wars Zero Company is a must-buy.

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