Star Wars Zero Company arrives with a debt to pay and a cult to hunt. Bit Reactor developed it, Electronic Arts published it, and it shipped August 27, 2026 for PlayStation 5, Windows and Xbox Series X/S. It is a single-player turn-based tactics game set in the final year of the Clone Wars. It is also the best squad-level Star Wars game in years.
Trailer, via EA Star Wars.
Tesh Hawks and the Ring of Kafrene
You play as Tesh Hawks, a former Galactic Republic captain who took the blame for a devastating defeat against the Separatists. Cast out of service, Hawks leads Zero Company, a ragtag band of misfits and mercenaries working out of a hideout called the Den on the Ring of Kafrene. They are deep in debt to the Hutts and scraping by on dangerous contracts.
The setup does the work that a dozen cutscenes usually fail to do. Zero Company is broke, compromised and one bad job from collapse. That pressure carries into every mission.
Hawks is yours to shape. At the start you customize gender, appearance and voice. The game never treats that choice as cosmetic decoration. It treats it as the spine of a story about a commander rebuilding a reputation.
Turn-Based Combat With Permanent Consequences
Combat is turn-based and played from a top-down perspective. You command a squad that mixes custom mercenaries with story characters. Each class plays differently, and the story characters carry unique skills and abilities of their own. You can also build astromech droids that support the party and handle explosives.
Every turn, each character has a limited number of action points governing how many actions they take and how far they move. Certain abilities replenish those points mid-turn, which turns a stalled round into a rescue.
Then there is the part that raises the stakes:
- Squad members can sustain lasting injuries or die permanently.
- The narrative continues regardless of who is lost.
- Enemy placement is procedurally generated, even though Bit Reactor designs each level.
- Missions carry different objectives, and some expire if you do not finish them in time.
Permanent death in a tactics game is common. Permanent death that does not stop the plot is rarer, and it is the right call here. Losing a soldier should cost you something the story acknowledges, not reset a checkpoint.
Between missions you manage the Den. Research, gear upgrades, strategic investigations and tactical strikes all run through the base. Time advances in cycles as you complete missions. You can launch non-combat operations to gather intel, and those missions ask for narrative decisions whose consequences land several cycles later. A progression system lets you choose which permanent upgrades to deny your enemies through sabotage. Outside combat, you explore in third person.
The Den gives the campaign a second rhythm. You are not only fighting the Infinite Coil, you are keeping a business alive while you do it.
Kundri Fathom and the Shadow Plague
During a mission on Serolonis, Zero Company runs into the Infinite Coil, a Separatist-aligned cult led by Kundri Fathom and droid general Typhon. Every member of the Coil is infected with the Shadow Plague, a disease that kills some victims and leaves survivors physically enhanced and open to Fathom’s influence.
Republic Intelligence officer Bennic Halloren and Republic-aligned Luunatan noble Jae Mordant offer Hawks a deal: help stop Fathom and the Coil, and Zero Company’s debt disappears.
The crew around Hawks earns its screen time. Clone trooper CT-3301, nicknamed Trick, joined after injuries got him discharged. Runa Blask, a Togruta partisan loyal to the Separatist cause, became wanted by both sides and helped found the outfit. She serves as second-in-command and financial consultant.
Zero Company traces the Coil to an initiation ceremony on Courtsilius. There they meet Tel-Rea, a Tognath Jedi Padawan chasing the Coil on her own while trying to finish her dead Master’s final mission. They clear Courtsilius of the Coil, and Tel-Rea joins the company.
Later, alongside Republic forces led by Jedi General Anakin Skywalker, Zero Company infiltrates a prisoner exchange between the Republic and Umbaran Partisans. The Coil interrupts it and kills the Umbaran leader for going ahead with the exchange.
What the Score Actually Reflects
Star Wars Zero Company is set in 19 BBY, the last year of the Clone Wars, and it uses that clock well. The Republic is still standing, the Separatists are still a threat, and none of it feels like set dressing for a known ending.
The procedural enemy placement is the one design choice worth arguing about. It keeps missions from becoming memorized puzzles, but it also means a carefully built level can be undermined by a bad roll of spawns. Bit Reactor’s level design is strong enough that the randomness mostly adds tension rather than noise.
What matters more is that the game respects loss. Injuries linger. Deaths stick. The plot moves on without the people you failed to protect, and the Den keeps running whether or not you are ready for the next contract. That combination of tactical pressure and narrative follow-through is what separates Star Wars Zero Company from the long line of licensed strategy games that let you reload your way out of every mistake.
The published critical score sits at 9.4/10 across three outlets, and that number holds up. Star Wars Zero Company is a gritty, authentic squad story with real teeth, and it earns its place among the best Star Wars games of the modern era.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
