XCOM, in the last year of the Clone Wars

Consoles cost more than PC — $59.99 on Xbox and PlayStation for the same standard edition. No Game Pass or EA Play day-one inclusion has been announced.

This page is the reference sheet: what the game is, what the reviews said, what the editions cost, how permadeath works, whether your machine will run it, and what is not coming. It is written for someone deciding whether to buy on day one, not for someone already fifteen hours in. There is no score from me on it — I have not played it yet — so where a judgement is needed, you get the critics’ numbers and the primary sources they came from, and you decide.

A squad tactics game with a base, a roster and a campaign — the XCOM shape, wearing Clone Wars armour. EA describes the setting as “the twilight of the Clone Wars”, which puts it at the end of the war rather than in the middle of it.

You play Hawks, a former Republic officer who leads a private outfit of specialists after the Republic no longer has a use for them. The enemy is the Infinite Coil, a Separatist-aligned cult under Kundri Fathom. Missions run on a galaxy map covering more than 150 planets, with a smaller set of hand-built worlds — Bespin, Dantooine, Lothal, Ryloth among them — carrying the tactical maps. Home base is the Den, on the Ring of Kafrene.

The unit itself is deliberately mixed, and that is the point of it: a clone trooper who walked away from his number, a Mandalorian, an Umbaran sniper, an ore-baroness, a Jedi Padawan and a droid, alongside the custom characters you build yourself. Zero Company operates outside the Grand Army’s chain of command, which is what lets the game put clone troopers, bounty hunters and droids in the same squad without the story creaking.

The pedigree is the reason to pay attention. Bit Reactor was founded in 2022 by Greg Foertsch, art director on the modern XCOM games, and the studio’s own site says its people “collectively developed some of the most successful games you’ve heard of, such as XCOM, Civilization, Gears of War, and Elders Scrolls Online”. Story is by Aaron Contreras, who wrote the Star Wars Jedi games. Gordy Haab wrote the score.

The combat, in one paragraph

Three action points a turn, up to four operators in the field, overwatch cones you place by hand rather than a blanket cover arc, and a shared Advantage pool that caps at ten and pays for the big moves. Four weapon classes — longarm, repeater, rifle, pistol. Between missions you run the Den: recruitment, armory, medbay, upgrades, a memorial wall. Your roster tops out at twenty.

What it is not

There is no multiplayer. EA’s own support page lists what the game does not include: online or competitive multiplayer, online co-op, local or split-screen co-op, other online social features. There are no romances, no branching endings — EA says “the story’s conclusion will be largely the same for everyone” — and no New Game+.

The embargo lifted on 26 August, one day before release. Every critic review carries that date. EA never announced an embargo time publicly — the date is visible in the reviews themselves, not in a press note.

IGN and PC Gamer both landed on 90. PC Gamer’s verdict reads “a new all-timer Star Wars game and a stunning debut for Bit Reactor”. The dissent is technical rather than critical: PC Games, GAMES.CH, Atomix, PSX Brasil and TrueAchievements all flag bugs and performance, PC Gamer logged two hard crashes in the review period, and GamesRadar lists “a bevy of bugs awaiting a day-0 patch” among its cons. That patch is real according to several outlets, but EA has published no patch notes for it, so treat the fixed version as promised rather than seen.

One honest note on the numbers: Metacritic’s PC page says “Showing 43 Critic Reviews” while its own distribution adds up to 41. That is their counter, not mine, and it is the reason this page quotes the distribution rather than a single review count.

Two digital editions, and a console tax that is not a rounding error — the same standard edition is ten dollars more on Xbox and PlayStation than on Steam.

The Deluxe extras are cosmetic only: a Grand Army of the Republic pack, a Shadow Collective pack, and five weapon set themes. Pre-ordering either edition adds the Crystalline Astromech pack. The Collector’s Edition is region-free, ships for PS5, Xbox or PC, and is built around a Black Series electronic thermal detonator; Limited Run still lists it as “Pre-production”, and EA has never confirmed the edition itself — the retailer is the only source for it.

A physical standard edition exists for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S only, and EA is careful to say “from selected retailers only”. There is no physical PC release outside the Collector’s Edition.

Pre-order content is identical on both editions: the Crystalline Astromech pack, built around the R3 droid, with translucent crystalline heads for the R4 and R5 units and an exclusive BR-1 droid. Steam’s fine print gives you until 27 August 2027 to redeem it. The deluxe edition adds nothing that changes how the game plays — if you are weighing the deluxe edition against the standard, you are choosing between cosmetics, not content.

Zero Company ships with eight standard specializations — Assault, Gunslinger, Heavy, Medic, Scoundrel, Scout, Sharpshooter and Soldier — each carrying an ultimate, a standard ability and passives. Specializations are swappable in the Den, and secondary specializations unlock partway through the campaign. Alongside them sit four exotic classes — the Jedi Padawan Tel-Rea Vokoss, the Mandalorian Cly Kullervo, an astromech you build yourself, and a fourth EA has still not revealed. Tel-Rea is the only Jedi on the roster, which is EA’s way of telling you she can die like anyone else.

The full breakdown — every specialization, what each one is actually for, and which ones survive contact with the late campaign — lives on the Zero Company classes page.

Permadeath is on by default and can be switched off. That second half matters more than the first, because the way it works is gentler than the XCOM reflex suggests.

So the campaign will take people off you, but it gives you three chances to notice. If that still sounds like more tension than you want, the toggle is right there in the options and nothing else in the game is gated behind leaving it on.

EA lists 50 GB of storage for both the minimum and the recommended spec. The often-quoted 34 GB download figure comes from the press, not from EA, and the two numbers are answering different questions.

Two things the table will not tell you. On Intel Arc cards EA asks you to turn Resizable BAR on. And the Steam Deck is not a candidate — PC Gamer put it at 15 to 20 frames per second, and when EA was asked about Deck and Switch in July the answer was that they were still optimising and would share news if there was any. There has not been any.

Playing requires an internet connection, an EA account, and linking that account to whichever store you bought it on — for a game with no online features at all.

Asked in July about DLC and post-launch content, EA answered: “Right now, we’re focused on making the best game we can at launch and don’t have anything to announce today.” On monetisation: “No, we don’t have any plans for monetization or microtransactions at this time.” On mods, lead producer Caydence Funk was flatter still — “there is no official mod support planned for Star Wars: Zero Company.”

One loose thread worth knowing about: the Xbox store page carries the standard “+Offers in-app purchases” flag, which sits awkwardly next to the no-microtransactions line. The likeliest explanation is the Deluxe upgrade being sold as an add-on. Nobody has confirmed that, so it stays a loose thread here rather than an answer.

For sixteen months this game was a rumour with a release window. We tracked all of it as it happened — and that page is still standing, unedited in hindsight, exactly as wrong and as right as it was on the day.

The full version of that timeline — every trailer, every walked-back rumour, every date that moved — is still live at Star Wars Zero Company: everything we know. It stops the day the game came out, on purpose.

No score from me yet — I have not played it, and this page will not pretend otherwise. What follows is the shape of the game as it is documented, matched against what you already know you like.