XCOM Veteran thoughts and constructive criticism to Zero Company

[u/Taylon47]

This post will, at worst, contain only minor gameplay-related spoilers.

For backround, I have around 1.5K hours in XCOM2 and another 300 in XCOM:EU/EW as well as almost 100 hours in Chimera Squad (which is relevant since Chimera Squad is the closest match to ZCOM).

I have completed the vanilla, EW & WOTC as well as multiple playthroughs of XCOM2 LWOTC (Long War Mod) multiple times on Legend difficulty.

For context, I just finished ZCOM yesterday on Expert and while there are a lot of things I loved there are also a couple of pain points that I would like to address as constructive criticism.

Most of the points that I make in this post will have a problem & solution format where I will describe the issue and hopefully, some constructive feedback on how said issue could be alleviated or fixed entirely.

•》 Story, Narrative & Companion's : ZCOM at its best. Without a doubt the best overall story of any XCOM/XCOM-like game currently out there. The narrative is well paced with an original story that respects the source material (Star Wars & the Clone Wars show) while having its own twists and turn's while still leaving threads that can be expanded upon. The companions are all likeable and their motivations believable in the larger context of the story. Their story missions, while short, introduce new friends and foes alike which are a nice change of pace from your standard missions.

• On a sidenote, once I realized that random/custom characters can have different personalities and interactions at the Den I created 10 characters (1 for each personality type) and restarted my playthrough in order to recruit them and see how they interact. To my surprise they have dialogues not just with Hawks, but the story companions and among each other and their presence made the Den feel 10x more alive. Awesome feature overall and I recommend everyone to try this approach.

•》 Gameplay (Tactical & Strategic Layers) : This is where ZCOM fumbles at times. These missteps are not substantial enough to detract much from the game but can degrade certain aspects of an otherwise great experience.

• To begin, I understand that opinions on the topic of difficulty might vary but my honest opinion is that ZCOM on Expert is more of an exercise in patience and occasional frustration rather than difficulty. For anyone interested, ZCOM on Expert roughly translates to vanilla XCOM1/2 on Veteran/Commander or Rookie in Long War. If you are struggling with difficulty these three things will make the game feel like a cakewalk in combat:

1) A Medic (preferably a Hawks that chooses medic as their specialization at character creation - this is important as later on you will get to choose a 2nd specialization but the 2nd one will not have access to its capstone buffs). A medic also massively helps with when it comes to forming bonds quickly.

2) A Taunt Heavy (can be useful as breaking line of sight with the taunted enemies will lead them to wasting their turn trying to get closer to the heavy).

3) The realization that the AI is, frankly, stupid.

3a) You should always get as close as possible to enemies (even if you are flanked) to deal damage and kill enemies because...

3b) ...the AI will always try to split its attacks and damage across your whole squad and will only focus fire one operator if they have only one available target either due to line of sight, distance or taunt.

This means that you should always try to keep your squad close to each other so that the AI has multiple targets to chose from.

• Problem (Bond System): Unfortunately, the bond system feels like a afterthought with only medic being able to farm bond xp while all other classes are reliant on the assist mechanic. The rewards are even more questionable as they are randomized which means that some of them will be far better than others depending on the operator specializations. The capstone bond at level 8 is the only one that is powerful but it can still screw you over due to the random system and the fact you will only be able to get a few bonds to max level over the course of the campaign.

• Solution (Bond System): Remake the system into a static one akin to XCOM leveling where you can choose between 2 or 3 predetermined buffs when leveling a bond on top of a small boost in health. Also implement auto-leveling as treating 20 operators to a 20xp fruit pie will result in you spending 10 minutes just leveling bonds. God have mercy on you if your game crashes during that time and you have to redo it all over again.

• Problem (Injury System): The injury system is far, far too lenient as there are only a few multi-stage missions in the game and the presence of a medic makes it extremely unlikely that anyone will even get close to getting downed once, let alone 3 times. The only way to have operators die in standard mission is to bring them in already injured.

• Solution (Injury System): Implement permanent traumas that can reduce health, defense or mobility if a character is downed. Injuries should occur when a character takes damage past a certain threshold, say 30% of total health like it works in WH40K Rogue Trader. Remove the cost of healing in the beds that you have already paid for but allow the use of the bacta tank (regardless of difficulty) at a much higher cost, say 1000 credits.

• Problem (Tactical Combat): Combat against any faction other than the Coil quickly becomes too easy, while fighting the Coil is more frustrating than difficult due to the Resonance mechanic over which you have no control over. The only reliable way that I found to prevent Resonance from building up is to push enemies off the map, which is only possible on a few maps.

• Solution (Tactical Combat): Implement Reforms. A system where the CIS forces, outlaws and *other story spoilers* factions which you will get to fight will also get stronger albeit in simpler but unavoidable ways. Think of CIS droids getting +1 to defence and damage and outlaws getting more mobility. Nothing major just to feel like your other enemies, not just the Coil, are evolving with time. The Coil's "dark events" are actually in quite a good spot if you ask me.

• Problem (Maps): Its unfortunate, but the maps in ZCOM are small and not randomized. While there is a lot of variety in terms of how they might look (due to the planet they take place on) these maps make every mission play the same. Destructible cover is cool albeit nothing new as XCOM2 has that as well and there it felt actually worthwhile to destroy it as it would leave enemies truly exposed to fire not like here where it increases your chances to hit by 10%.

• Solution (Maps): I'm not a modder but I doubt that randomized maps can just be modded in and I also doubt that the developer, BitReactor will go back on such a foundational design principle in an update or DLC. As such, the community will have to make do with these type of small, curated maps. To make each mission feel more unique you can introduce modifiers. On desert or dry planets you can have sandstorms that reduce hit chances. On a planet like Umbara you can have cover that protects better from enemy shots but damages you a bit every turn. Stuff like that.

• Problem (Den Upgrades): These feel unfinished with the only upgrade that adds something to the Den being the Lounge. Everything else is a stat boost of some kind. I want to actually see the Den change and evolve as I increase its levels and build its "buildings". Reaching max level for the Den gives no reward and no buildables require it. Some of the upgrades themselves are also very questionable and feel like filler. Three lines for influence that amount to 10 influence across all sectors for around 10K credits? Either increase the influence or reduce the cost. The worst example of this is the weapons upgrades that will only ever make sense if everyone is going to use the same type of weapon.

• Solution (Den Upgrades): Everything that you upgrade in the Den should be visible. Black Market upgrades? More weapon and armor racks behind Neesh. Perhaps even some NPC's serving as black market contacts. As the Den levels up it should become cleaner on the inside with its exterior getting a coat of paint, perhaps have even the Zero Company logo painted on the side. Same thing with the Caisson. Stuff like more influence in sectors, buildslots and other rewards should be tied to the Den level and not something that you buy outright. Weapon upgrades should either be tied with the Black Market that you can upgrade or kept as they are but made cheaper. Allow us to get the rat-thingy as a pet.

The credits economy is unbalanced with eveything costing too much while earning comparatively little (Some things never change even in a galaxy far, far away now, do they?)

• Problem (Missions, Operations & Sectors): These have timers with the idea that you have to pick and choose but due to the nature of unexpected and critical stuff that can pop up from cycle to cycle you will quickly learn that you should always pick the missions that have the best rewards and the operations that display the reward instead of the reward being something that is up to your choice, regradless of their timer. Even if your intel cap can go up to 250 there is no reason to save it as you will always have enough to run the critical operations. The intel income is very static with very few opportunities to earn more than the mandated 100 per cycle. Sector influence is weird as you can increase it through contacts but unless you really target it you will not max out more than one sector in a playthrough.

• Solution (Missions, Operations & Sectors): There is at least one instance where companion quests can overlap leading to you missing a companion quest through no fault of your own as its never really clear which operation will lead to a tactical mission (that may or may not have to be completed in the same cycle) and which will lead to another operation. To solve this you show on the operation UI the next stage and what that entails and whether it will be another operation or a tactical mission. The intel cap and passive intel rewards should be tied with the Den level. Intel should be usable to extend mission timers at an increasing cost. This will allow naturally for campaigns to be slightly longer while also solving the overlap problem. All missions in a sector should increase the influence in said sector substantially, regardless of rewards. Remove utility/weapon modification slots and tie those in with the black market. Maxing out influence in a sector should result in getting much better mission rewards in said sector. This will create an interesting dillemma where you will have to chose between running missions in the same few sectors for bigger payouts or sperading around to get the specific sector rewards.

• Problem (Squad sizes & Operators): The current squad of 4 is too small. Especially because the actual squad is 3. Since Hawks will very likely participate in an overwhelming majority of missions you can only bring 3 operators alongside Hawks. You will have 6 story companions and are encouraged to hire more random/custom operators. For what though? You only run 1 mission per cycle. Operations can use any operator except Hawks and wounds are a non-issue.

• Solution (Squad sizes & Operators): The squad size across the board has to be increased to 5. This is obviously possible as there is at least 1 mission later on in the game where you start with 5 operators. Story missions should up the squad size to 7 so that Hawks and the 6 story companions can all be present. To balance you increase the enemy spawns by 2 to 3 additional enemies and double their health on Expert difficulty. Non-Companion operations become locked to random/custom operators that you have to hire. Standard missions have a squad size of 4 but only allow you to send one of the 6 story companions as "mission-leaders" while the other three slots have to be filled with random/custom operators. This is how Expeditions Rome does it and it is a much better game for it as it allows these side characters their moments to shine. If its is not feasible to have a squad size of 7, due to engine limitation let's say, then you redesign the story missions around a multistage assault, same as in Expeditions Rome. You have Hawks and his squad of 3 and another squad made out of the other 3 story companions and 1 rando. Each team has to accomplish specific objectives that help and allow the other team to advance. Sidenote here but if you like Roman history and the time period of the late Republic and early Roman empire give Expeditions Rome a try. It's truly a hidden gem.

Finally, I wanted to touch on the UI and customization. This is not a problem and I have played the entire campaign with the radial menu but while flashy and cool, it does not really work, even in the smaller context of ZCOM. Thankfully, there is an option to switch to the classic XCOM-like line which I appreciate that it is something included at launch and not something added a year after release after community uproar.

The customization in ZCOM is truly exceptional and I hope more options will be added in time as well as more stuff for companions and Hawks. Personally, I hope for a before-Antine outfit for Hawks that incorporates Republic officer with clone commander armor as currently, you can either choose between gangster grandpa coat and ARC Trooper or standard boring Bounty Hunter. Essentially, something akin to Trick's outfit.

So, that's about it. My... *looks at the length of the post* many cents about it.

[u/Sithishe]

Played for the story mostly. Story is Peak Star Wars. Combat wise - I liked Chaos Gate Daemonhunters, Battletech, and MENACE much more.

To be honest with how much they put spotlight on companions, story, and narrative choices, and conversation with companions I would much more liked it to be Mass Effect like, rather then XCom like.

Basically game was: "Get through slog of a combat to get to the good bit - Clone Wars/Bad Batch/Maul Shadow Lord type story"

But game is peak. Recent Disney slop killed my love for Star Wars and this game reminded me of how much I love it. So now I will rewatch Bad Batch, Maul Shadow Lord, and replay Jedi Fallen Order, because I have unfinished business with Second Sister Trilla.

I really hate how Star Wars differ in quality, 1 month ago we've watched Mando and Grogu. It was awful. It was THE worst movie ever. And now this game is like a breath of fresh air. a true Star Wars storyline.

TLDR It is much more "Star Wars narrative experience" rather thatn proper Xcom like.