Customization in Star Wars: Zero Company goes far beyond choosing a haircut or colour palette. This is about defining your squad’s identity, shaping your main character’s legacy, and making tough calls that ripple through a persistent campaign. If you’ve been craving deeper tactical RPG elements in a Star Wars strategy setting, this part of the game will likely grab your attention.
Let’s start with Hawks, the main character. You don’t play as a fixed protagonist. You customise them from the ground up. Gender, species, voice, appearance, even their combat class. Your version of Hawks isn’t just cosmetic, the choices you make matter. Class choice changes how you lead, how you fight, and how your squad responds to situations. There’s some light RPG flavour here, but nothing too drawn out. It’s more Mass Effect than Baldur’s Gate.
Then there’s the squad itself. You can recruit a mix of characters from across the galaxy. Think Clone Troopers, Mandalorians, Jedi, Astromech Droids. Some are fully original. Others are nods to familiar archetypes, but with fresh backstories. Each can be customised visually and tactically. Loadouts, gear, and abilities can all be adjusted. You decide who covers which role, who takes the lead on certain missions, and who gets paired up in the field.
When speaking of pairings, the bond system is worth talking about. Squad members build relationships over time. These affect how they perform in combat and open up dialogue and story branches. It’s more than flavour text. A strong bond can unlock joint skills or allow one trooper to take a hit for another. On the flip side, if you lose someone – because yes, there’s optional permadeath – it can hit hard, both narratively and tactically. If you disable permadeath, the emotional tension drops, but the game still simulates injuries, morale shifts, and consequences.
Customization also shows up in how you build and manage your forward base. The choices here aren’t deep city-builder fare, but they affect access to gear, mission types, and upgrades for your squad. It’s more XCOM than Star Wars: Empire at War, but it’s functional and feeds into the same tactical loop.
This isn’t the first game to mix squad strategy with personalisation, but the Star Wars setting helps it feel more grounded. You’re shaping a Clone Wars-era unit trying to hold things together during a chaotic time in the galaxy rather than just tweaking combat stats. The decisions you make with your squad aren’t flashy, they’re deliberate, and they stack up over time.
So far, the devs have played it smart. No overhyped marketing promises of infinite freedom. Just solid, thoughtful systems wrapped in a familiar setting. If they land it, Zero Company could end up being one of the more meaningful Star Wars games in recent years. Not because it reinvents anything, but because it lets you care about the squad you build.