STAR WARS Zero Company™

8/10, would play again. Overall the gameplay was solid and story was good. Is the story good enough for multiple playthroughs? I think it might get old after 2 or 3 runs, but the main draw isn't the story after a few runs. It has some nice twists and cameos, but the original cast is fairly strong. To me, the story is as much about Bennic as it is about Hawks. Each companion sticks out as different people and the custom operators do not feel too generic. Gameplay is solid. Xcom/tactics would describe it. Turn based shooting percentages that depend on angles and cover. However if you are looking for an xcom experience like I was, it will be very different. The tactical level wasn't terribly hard coming from someone who struggles on Xcom eu/ew hard, but breezed through Zero company on hard with only one mission failure. The mission failure resulted from playing the game too much like Xcom and was far too passive. There is some pretty obvious synergies and ability spamming can carry you through the game. The strategic level felt very meaningless as they did not seem to affect what I did on a tactical level at all. Character bonds mattered far more than Den upgrades. There were some hard fights, but that came from the lack of knowledge. On a second playthrough, I suspect it would be easier, even if the difficulty was pushed up. The overall cycles felt a bit low for how the story was moving along and how it ended. I do wish that there was some way to play NG+ to just mess around with your full team or for some post story content. Compared to Xcom, there was no way to just stall the end of the game indefinitely to enjoy maxed out operators. Maxing out multiple bonds proves difficult without planning. There is little reason to change your team roster, injuries aside. Operators are also hard to lose due to needing to take 3 downs to kill. Game is more interesting also if you do not just reset your operators constantly to power game. Game atmosphere was good. There are worldbuilding hints scattered in with how the operators talk and news you could watch. News is entirely missable so certain twists can happen without warning. Different character backgrounds also lend credibility to company operations. People random,ly firing their blasters while you make a decision was a neat touch but can get annoying for some. I wish some animations were skippable, but won't bother me until more playthroughs. I do hope there is a skip tutorial in the future or auto cutscene skip at some point but it it doesn't happen, it won't hurt my enjoyment much. Overall few bugs were experienced. Visuals did not always play out correctly, such as destroyer droids rolling in place and people occasionally teleporting to their final destination. Caused overwatch to only bug out once, but there are few technical hiccups. This may be a result of a weaker rig on lowest settings, but it ran fine. Like I said, 8/10 would play again. On with run 2 and maybe gunning for 100% achievement completion. Not a perfect game, but a solidly built one.