@alanmagni's review of Star Wars Zero Company
★★★★★
First of all, I didn't play the XCOM games for more than a few hours back in the day, and Star Wars was never something I was religiously passionate about. Especially in recent years, with all that Disney bs, I've grown really tired of the franchise. That said, I really like Zero Company, and I think it's one of the best games released this year. The combination of the tactics genre and Star Wars really works. They made it very approachable as well. The difficulty can be brutal at times, but it never felt unfair, with the exception of those misses on 95-100% chances but that's just a traditional XCOM quirk. All the mechanics are naturally introduced to you, and the tutorials do a great job explaining them, so you just keep rolling through the game feeling like you're naturally good at the tactics genre. When you beat a difficult mission, it feels very rewarding, not too easy and not too hard, exactly how it should be. Personally, I usually grow tired of games at around the 30-35 hour mark, and I beat Zero Company in exactly 35 hours, which was perfect. Although, I can understand that for people who love tactics games, it might feel too short. Star Wars wouldn't be Star Wars without cinematic cutscenes. Even with the top down gameplay, they made it incredibly engaging by mixing gameplay with well made cutscenes. What really makes Zero Company work for me are these story beats and the relaxing conversations with your crew in between missions. The art style, graphics, and Star Wars space western flavor make it even better. Speaking of relaxing conversations with your crew, the strongest part of the game is its dialogue and characters. You really feel these characters, they have backgrounds and history with the main character. They are not just pawns, they joke around and express their frustration. The main character has Han Solo + weirdly enough, Brad Pitt vibes, throwing dad jokes left and right. With all these layers of writing, you truly care about the characters not dying in battle, elevating the engagement to a ridiculous level. The story as a whole was nothing crazy, but it did enough for me. The progression system is the second thing I love most. It has its flaws, and the economy might be a bit off right now, but maybe that's a deliberate choice to show how desperate the crew is, always fighting for another credit and overcoming the difficulties that the Star Wars world throws at them. The game has a bond system, so the more often you send certain characters together on missions, the stronger they become. As a whole, the game loop is great: do a mission, grab the loot, talk with the crew in the den, rinse and repeat. Zero Company, as of the first week after release, has some minor issues with bugs, texture flickering and performance. Nothing outrageous and it's easily fixable, so there is that. It's the first game for this studio and judging by the reception on Steam the game seems to be doing well. I really hope it will be a success and we'll see more games from these guys. Maybe not a Zero Company 2 and not even a Star Wars game but I'm really excited to see what the next story from them will be.
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