Zero Company is the best of the Star Wars galaxy in a long, long time
One of my main characters in Zero Company died on the very first mission. After using them sparingly as a sort of backup, they met their fate in a turn-based blaze of gunfire and were pulled off of the field. “Oh well,” I thought as I continued to push my way through. Until the mission was over and a cut scene took place with the rest of my squad honoring the death of this seemingly inconsequential dude. What?! I was crushed. Suddenly overcome with a feeling of “I fucked up!” I immediately restarted the mission and ran through it again.
And he died again.
And I loved it.
Star Wars: Zero Company, the game that The Internet has affectionately and very perfectly been shorthanding to “ZCOM”, is described on-the-box as a turn-based tactical strategy game in the Star Wars universe set between Episodes II and III of the films. From my standpoint, though, it is better described as a political mercenary drama befitting of Tony Gilroy’s Andor with weight to our actions and action to our waits. Knee deep in the Clone Wars, something I never took it upon myself to care very much for, it balances sublime gameplay on the field with moral judgments off of it, reminding us over and over that it’s telling a story through how we play, not just what we play.
I mean, we can riff out on a space guitar. That should be enough to light up our joysabers.
Anyways the gameplay is extremely easy to get into, even with the permadeath on, and it keeps the battles flowing amidst a constant barrage of neat and unique set pieces. Opening areas in games are typically short tutorials, but this one is long, expansive, and does a great job of throwing us right into the plot. We have free movement to position ourselves, use AP to determine moves that we can make, and it does it in that Star Wars way where the developers, Bit Reactor, have made conscious UI choices to make sure it all fits in to the IP. It’s not the deepest, it’s not the most intricate, but it prioritizes us experiencing the game equally rather than being overly weighted on the details. The chaining of attacks, both from one character and teammates, is a joy. The game is just so fun, it’s immensely replayable. It’s like we’ve got some cool new Star Wars toys that we’re mashing together, and then going to the store and adding more and more.
Action aside, it truly has a great plot. Not only are we hired mercenaries to help run some secret missions but we also have to deal with the day to day part of owning a mercenary force. There are conversations in the game about how much money we’re losing and spending, about how we’re getting crewed out of a gig, and about how maybe the folks we’re helping aren’t necessarily the Good Guys. It’s fun for a process dude like me who likes to know the motivations of characters and settings outside of the typical Hero’s Journey. The in-between segments, which play out like small text adventures, fill out the story and our characters’ lives, leading to more missions and loot we can accumulate. The focus on a narrative like this creates a full story that’s completely engaging, all the way from start to finish. There’s even a character creator for our hero Hawks, but it’s lite, just giving us a few choices for alien race, faces, body type, but for what it needs to be it’s fine. It feels more like it’s about personalizing some of the frivolous stuff (hair, beard, clothes) than about wholesale changes. This is Star Wars, and Disney has some of this stuff on lockdown.
Star Wars: Zero Company excels and accelerates to the very top of modern tactical strategy games, with an incredible effort put forward in design choices and interactivity, standout level design, and memorable characters that we’ll be connected to way more than we thought we could be. It’s a triumphant video game and one of the best of the year.
This review is based on a Steam code sent to the Editor by the Publisher. Images/video courtesy publisher.
RATING: 5/5
EXCEPTIONAL
