Zero Company Review: Tactical Joy, Toothless Permadeath — SkimNews
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- Bit Reactor developed Star Wars Zero Company as a turn-based tactics game built around XCOM-style class abilities, dice rolls, and permadeath — with several key studio members having previously worked on Firaxis' XCOM.
- Creative director Greg Foertsch frames the game's design philosophy around loss, telling the review: "Star Wars is about loss."
- Despite permadeath being sold as a looming threat in the scripted tutorial, Zero Company rarely puts the squad in real danger even on its toughest difficulty, blunting the potential for unscripted drama.
- The game excels at emergent camaraderie stories instead: character bonds strengthen through in-battle cooperation — a Mandalorian medic healing a Jedi, an Astromech launching a stim to Kabb mid-air — yielding stat boosts.
- Composer Gordy Haab scored the game, with the review praising his pitch-perfect tribute to the textures of John Williams' original Star Wars score.
- The Den serves as a streamlined XCOM-style command centre crossed with Mass Effect's Normandy hangout space, where players spend intel, customise upgrades, and join crew members on personal quests.
- The Infinite Coil enemy faction is criticised as a tiresomely exoticised, ill-defined cult whose reliance on healing and damage negation produces laborious late-game encounters, dragging the weakest stretch of an otherwise strong debut.
- Star Wars Zero Company is out now at £39.99.
Why it matters: Bit Reactor's debut delivers character-driven tactical fun but softens the punishing permadeath DNA that its XCOM veteran staff helped design, and the underdeveloped Infinite Coil villain drags late-game combat. At £39.99, players get a polished, accessible squad romp rather than the punishing roguelike its systems suggest — a deliberate trade-off that defines who the game is for.
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