Respawn #1: Heroes for Hire

I wasn't even sure if I should put ‘Star Wars: Zero Company’ in this series let alone making it the first entry considering it only came out a couple months ago. That being said, I’ve played the entirety of The Blood of Dawnwalker and the whole time I was thinking how I didn’t give Zero Company a fair shake and that the stuff I was seeing online about the game seemed really cool.  

Why did I quit the first time? - This is my first proper experience with a X-COM like game and despite everyone online claiming it was easier than traditional X-COM, I was struggling more than I feel like I should be in the earlier stages of the game. Some poor choices and misunderstanding of mechanics led to somewhat of a dead end. 

Join me in a tale from a long time ago and galaxy far far away for Respawn, starting with Star Wars: Zero Company 

Major GAMEPLAY and STORY SPOILERS follow.

Reader discretion is advised.

First things first is making a new Hawks. I tried the default male the first time around (with some small alterations). This time I went in a different direction – everyone has claimed that the intervals between missions where you can talk to your crew are a bit like Mass Effect and I agree, so I turned my Hawks into a recreation of my Femshep from my trilogy playthrough last year. It’s not perfect given the face templates avaliable but maybe this is an older Shep. Regardless, welcome Leda Hawks.

Of course having some prior knowledge is helpful but the differences between the first run and this run are night and day. I really struggled the first time around but I made it to the same major story point, the mission ‘Dark Waters’, without any injuries. I did have some injuries in this mission and beyond but getting here flawless was empowering.

Dark Waters is definitely a spike in difficulty, no two ways about that and its because of The Coil, the main antagonist faction. There’s very little visual distinction between them (if there was, maybe I’d know more and plan fights better) and the Resonance system is maddening. When a Coil trooper dies, they release their essence to the nearest Coil. This causes them to Resonate. A second Coil death causes them to Surge, which activates whatever power they have. Personally I don’t think basic troopers should be acting like super powered bosses. The fact the souls can travel across the arena is another point of contention - if they’re not close then they shouldn’t see any benefits.

From that point, the success of a mission was 50/50. Some missions I really struggled with like Tel Rea’s first loyalty mission, there was a double king of the hill mission and an astromech rescue mission. Other times I ice skated through a mission like Zero Company were actually an elite unit. I heard the boss fights against Geryon in the Luco quest Lord of Betrayal and the story fight against Visser in Behind Enemy Lines were really difficult fights but I managed both without any trouble. Speaking of, I seemed to have navigated the Luco or Tel Rea loyalty mission problem.

I will say having all the missions being time limited and only being able to do one mission per cycle is unnecessarily rushing both the player and the game. I suppose since the side quests don’t offer too much variety in their content, playing more of them would highlight the fact. It’s not like the game doesn’t have cool set pieces - the escape from Orinda is a particular highlight with you having to outpace the Vulture Droid bombings. The end of the Bespin mission has a similar idea of area denial, I think the game needed more of this.

Unfortunately all the big story moments got ruined for me online - Anakin, Rex, the Clone Scientist, Order 66 and Second Sister (who is surprisingly optional). Seeing these moments in game was still pretty cool though.

Something that’s not cool is the amount of bugs and glitches the game has. I’m aware the developers ran out of money before the end of development but the number of little things like lighting bugs, frame drops, low framerate in general. The most aggrevating one was the seconds long gap between phases where it seemed like the game had to think about what it was doing next. That alongside the lack of quality of life features like speeding up turns or skipping animations made things slower.

It was a glitch that brings the playthrough to a premature end. Not entirely premature but enough. On the last mission, the semifinal boss against Typhon, there is apparently a known glitch that causes Typhon to not be targetable by enemy attacks, all the while reinforcements regularly spawn. Typhon only enters the fight after several waves of dangerous enemies. Hawks died in one attempt and on the second, this glitch occured. I don’t have it in me to try again so it’s YouTube for the ending cutscenes.

Original Playthrough time: 5:55

New Playthrough time: 27:20

Was the game worth coming back to?

Despite not getting as much from the story as I otherwise had done if not for spoilers, I’m glad I came back to Zero Company. XCOM likes aren’t my favourite genre but I think I enjoy them enough to give them a solid try. With a bit more polish and some small design changes, I think it could have been a great game. For me? A decent game.