Before I start, I have to say I am enjoying Star Wars Zero Company. I’m a big fan of turn based tactics games. Whether it’s Gears Tactics or Fire Emblem, it’s a genre that’s close to my heart. Oddly i’ve never played X-Com, which this game shares a lot of DNA with. Understandable as the game was made by former developers.
However, during my play so far I have come across an abundance of technical issues. From texture pop in and freezing gameplay to severely choppy frame rate and characters blasting me through solid objects.
Are these technical issues hampering my gameplay? Not massively, but they are tainting the experience somewhat. When I think about a 9 out of 10 gameplay experience I consider games which are near perfect in their graphics, story and gameplay, all combining into an immersive and enjoyable experience where you feel you are truly in the game world. When glitches and errors occur they abruptly remove you from that fantasy. So whilst I enjoy the gameplay, I feel a balanced review would acknowledge these shortcomings in the overall score.
Case in point is Star Wars Outlaws which got absolutely slammed in reviews for its technical issues. However, in my opinion, the game was fantastic and deserved far more than mediocre reviews. If reviewers are content looking past the issues Zero Company has, why didn’t they with Outlaws. Is it because the game was made by Ubisoft? It did seem at the time there was a tendency to jump on the ‘hate everything Ubisoft does’ bandwagon. Or was it something else?
Also Outlaws got patched and many of the issues that reviews complained about were resolved. Yet are they going to go back and score it again. No they won’t. I don’t feel it’s right or fair that Zero Company’s flaws are being overlooked so blatantly. Also the developers that made it are now down to a skeleton crew so who knows when it will get patched.
So, in my opinion, as great as Zero Company is I feel it should be a 7 or 8 out of 10. Certainly not a 9!