It’s taken decades, but Star Wars might finally have a squad-based strategy game that makes sense. We have had grand-scale battles, and we’ve lived lone Jedi power-fantasies. But a small, tight team figuring things out on the ground, that’s something that’s never been seen before. Which is ironic, because that’s the most Star Wars-y of Star Wars set-ups. It’s how most Star Wars stories actually work.
Look at any part of the canon that isn’t fixated on lightsabres and The Force. The original trilogy is a ragtag squad pulling off impossible missions. Clone Wars is basically a playbook of team-based ops. Rebels is a rotating crew of specialists. Even Andor, grounded and cynical as it is, is still about people working together to pull off jobs. Star Wars is built around groups, not solo heroes.
The closest we’ve ever come to commanding a squad in a Star Wars game is Republic Commando, and even that was limited. You had three AI-controlled troopers, fixed loadouts, and a handful of context-sensitive commands. Far from being a tactics game, it was a linear shooter with light squad dressing.
Everything else has either ignored squads completely or buried them in genres where they don’t matter. Galactic Battlegrounds and Empire at War let you control groups of units, but they’re traditional RTS games with top-down, mass unit control and no real focus on squad-level interplay. In Battlefront II, ‘squad’ just means you respawn near your teammates. You’re not commanding anything.
We have not seen anything like this in Star Wars gaming before. In all the Star Wars games we’ve played before, none have let you build and command a proper squad where unit choice, team composition, and tactics matter. Not just who looks cool standing behind you, but who does what, when, and how.
It works because Star Wars has always been about small groups. The franchise isn’t built on lone wolves, it’s built on oddball teams trying to survive against the odds. Rebels, clone squads, resistance cells, bounty hunter crews, it’s all squad-based storytelling, even if the games rarely reflect that.
Zero Company doesn’t lock you into a pre-made, pre-determined, predictable line-up. No bland ‘balanced’ squad composition is forced on you. Sure, there are archetypes available in the named character roster; Trick is your soldier, Luco Bronc is the sniper, Cly Kullervo is the heavy weapons / demolitions expert and Tel-Rea Vokoss is a melee specialist, but these are optional not mandatory inclusions in your squad.
There’s no pressure to run a default squad and you’re not punished for experimenting. Greg Foertsch confirmed, during Star Wars Celebration, that if you want to run a squad of Astromech Droids, you can do. There are no ‘must includes’ or required units. You are free to do you.
What makes it click is how much room you have to mess with the formula. There’s no fixed squad layout, no obligation to tick tactical boxes. You can stack your team with overlapping roles, leave obvious gaps, or just field your personal favourites and make it work. It encourages risk, improvisation, and a bit of chaos. These are all things that fit the setting better than rigid balance ever could.
It’s the kind of design that trusts the player to make bad choices, and then have fun figuring out how to survive them. That’s very Star Wars-y too. Most plans in this universe go off the rails immediately. Victory usually comes from adapting, not executing a clean strategy.
That’s why the idea of Zero Company feels different. It will hand you the tools, step back, and let you figure it out, even if that means failing first. Most Star Wars games don’t even try to make tactics part of the experience. This one does.