STAR WARS Zero Company Is Out: Critics Call It One of the Best Star Wars Games in Years
- Aug 31 2026
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Bit Reactor's Clone Wars tactics game has been out for a few days, and the reviews have settled into a rare kind of consensus for a licensed debut. STAR WARS Zero Company launched August 27, 2026 on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S at $49.99, and critics are treating it as more than "XCOM with a Star Wars skin." It is a single-player, turn-based tactics campaign about Hawks, a former Republic officer leading a mercenary outfit through the last days of the Clone Wars, and the scores say Bit Reactor stuck the landing.
Every Move Counts
This is the game Firaxis veterans have been circling since Greg Foertsch left to found Bit Reactor in 2022, with Respawn and Lucasfilm Games in the mix and Aaron Contreras (the writer behind the Star Wars Jedi games) on the script. You customize Hawks, fill a squad with named story characters and custom mercs (scoundrels, clones, astromechs, even a Jedi), and fight from a top-down tactical view with a limited action-point budget each turn. Between missions you run the Den, a base where you research, upgrade gear, talk to the squad, and send informants out on timed operations that change what you walk into next.
The two design bets that keep coming up in reviews are permadeath and the squad. Named characters can die for good, and the campaign keeps going. Characters who deploy together build bonds and unlock combat synergies. Outside of combat you can walk the world in third person, which is the kind of presentation trick that makes a tactics game feel like a Star Wars movie instead of a spreadsheet with blasters.
I have not sat down with a full campaign yet, but I have been waiting for this one. Licensed tactics games usually either sand off the edges or forget why the license matters. The early word is that Zero Company does neither.
The Scores
On Metacritic, PC currently sits at 85 from 44 critic reviews, labeled Generally Favorable, with 98% positive, one mixed review, and zero negatives. PlayStation 5 is also 85 (14 reviews). Xbox Series X is 87, though that is a much smaller pool (7 reviews). OpenCritic has it at an 87 top critic average with 93% of critics recommending it.
That is a very clean board. For comparison, this is the kind of reception Star Wars games chase for years and rarely get outside of the Jedi series and a handful of classics.
Steam is a little more grounded, which is useful. English-language user reviews are Mostly Positive, with 78% of 7,946 reviews positive. Metacritic's user score is 7.9 from 105 ratings. The gap between critics and players is mostly technical: Unreal Engine 5 stutters, CPU load, and the usual "it should run better than this" complaints. The tactics themselves are not the fight.
What Critics Are Saying
Here is a spread of reviews, from the raves to the one real mixed take, so you can see the range instead of just the average.
PC Gamer: 90/100 A new all-timer Star Wars game and a stunning debut for Bit Reactor.
IGN: 90/100 Star Wars Zero Company is an excellent tactical game that does a fantastic job of slathering on the same cinematic look and feel we saw in Respawn's Star Wars Jedi games, incorporating strong characters and a storyline that's refreshingly centered on non-Force users and a non-traditional villain. There's more of an emphasis on cooperation and flexibility, and a tighter focus on smaller maps that encourage a radically different and more aggressive playstyle. It might not have the legendary level of replayability that's kept XCOM 2 in my rotation for a decade, but its lengthy story campaign is more than worth at least a couple of playthroughs before you can see everything and get the hang of its nuanced combat and synergies.
GameSpot: 8/10 Star Wars is a rich playground for games, with loads of differentiated hero and enemy types and powers baked in, and Zero Company takes full advantage of that to make an excellent tactics game in its own right. In doing so, it has made the next great evolution of the genre.
DualShockers: 90/100 After an eternity of modding XCOM into Star Wars, we finally have the tactics game from a galaxy far, far away that we deserve. Star Wars: Zero Company is an excellent addition to the saga that isn't scared of taking risks, and joins Andor and Rogue One in the pantheon of tales about high-risk covert operations.
Worth Playing: 96/100 Zero Company is a great turn-based strategy game that happens to be set in the Star Wars universe. It never feels like a corporate mandate to make a genre game with a recognizable license. Instead, it feels like a group of talented developers genuinely wanted to explore what the genre could do and had the freedom to experiment.
Press Start Australia: 90/100 Star Wars Zero Company is an incredible debut title from Bit Reactor. A tightly paced 30 hour tactics game with some of the best Star Wars storytelling in recent years. Star Wars and tactics fans alike would be remiss to not check out Zero Company.
GameRant: 9/10 With great presentation, a well-written story, and rock-solid fundamentals, Star Wars Zero Company is one of the best Star Wars games in years.
PCGamesN: 80/100 Star Wars Zero Company is a worthy addition to the canon of great Star Wars videogames. While its tactical battles could serve to be more complex and varied, the triple-A polish enhances a thrilling narrative that's begging to be replayed again and again.
Shacknews: 70/100 Star Wars Zero Company is kind of a bummer, because there's a fun tactical RPG here that manages to run a gamut from hardcore to friendly, thanks to an array of settings and well-designed mechanics that work in either direction. But man is it ever bogged down in some of the most uninspired Star Wars-themed storytelling and character work I've ever dealt with.
Shacknews is the mixed review on the Metacritic board, and it is worth reading if the story is what you are buying. Most other outlets landed in the opposite place: DualShockers, IGN, Press Start, and GameRant all treat the mercenary plot and the cast as the reason the tactics click. GameSpot's Steve Watts spent 30 hours on PC and came away arguing the named characters are the stars, and that the Coil enemies (who empower each other instead of acting like isolated XCOM pods) are the tactical wrinkle that makes it more than a costume.
The recurring caveats, even in the 90s, are familiar: IGN does not think it will have XCOM 2's decade-long replay loop, PCGamesN wants more variety in the battles, GameSpot noticed mission objectives repeating over a 30-hour run, and several PC reviews flag Unreal Engine 5 performance. None of that is sinking the score. It is the difference between "all-timer" and "near-perfect."
Why This One Matters
Star Wars has been hungry for a serious tactics game for a long time. Fans have been duct-taping the fantasy together with XCOM mods. Bit Reactor's answer is not a conversion pack. It is a campaign built around loss, squad chemistry, and a Clone Wars story that is allowed to be about contractors instead of chosen ones.
From a developer's seat, that is the interesting part. Permadeath on authored characters is a hard sell internally. Wikipedia's development notes match what we reported before launch: the team fought about it, then decided Star Wars is about loss, and that the game got stronger when they committed. Accessibility was designed in on purpose, with the story used to teach the systems instead of a separate tutorial island. That is how you get Player 2 saying it opens the genre to new players without boring the veterans.
If the combat is as aggressive and compact as IGN describes (smaller maps, more cooperation, less camping), that is also a real design choice, not a coat of paint. XCOM's long-range overwatch chess is a different sport from a Star Wars firefight. Making the maps tighter is how you make blasters feel like blasters.
Where to Play
STAR WARS Zero Company is out now on Steam, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.
Edition Price Included Standard $49.99 Base game Deluxe $59.99 Base game, Grand Army of the Republic Cosmetic Pack, Shadow Collective Cosmetic Pack, 5 Weapon Set ThemesIt is single-player only. Steam lists an EA Account as required to play. Steam Deck compatibility was still TBD in our earlier coverage, so check the store page if Deck is your plan. If you want the game page with more context, you can check it out here.
I'm looking forward to playing it, but I'm a little disappointed that it doesn't perform better on the Steam Deck. This is the perfect game to play on a handheld, but right now there is no Switch 2 option and the game is too heavy for the Deck. Hopefully we'll see some updates in the future to make that experience better. Until then, fire up your PC, Xbox, or PS5 and go fight your way through the Clone Wars. It's been a long time coming.
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