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I’ve been an XCom fan for years, and while we haven’t got a new one in a while, Star Wars Zero Companyseems like the perfect substitute. It’s in the Star Wars universe, which is awesome, and putting it in the middle of the Clone Wars makes it the perfect setting for a tactical game like this. And while I’ve been having a blast with it so far, it’s plagued with a lot of the same performance issues as Halo Campaign Evolved had about a month ago.
At the time of writing, my time with Zero Company has been a bit of a nightmare, filled with crashes and frame drops. I’m sure that, over time, the game will be patched to be a bit more stable, but right now, it doesn’t exactly play nice with low-to-mid-range hardware. I’ve even had some issues on an incredibly powerful RTX 5090gaming PC.
Star Wars Zero Company PC Settings
While you can tune Zero Company to run a bit smoother most of the time, there are still issues with frame drops, particularly in cutscenes. Even if you get the game to run at a steady 60fps, there will be times when the game will run into hitches. One of the best ways around that is to have a PC with a decent processor.
When I tried to run the game on something like the Lenovo Legion Go 2, the CPU would be pinned at around 50–60% usage, while the GPU sat at 70–80%, which is just leaving performance on the table. Nvidia Reflex and AMD FSR Anti-Lag help a bit there, but most of the time you’re going to be limited by your CPU. Even on a desktop with aRyzen 7 9850X3D and an RTX 5090, the game will occasionally spike CPU usage up to 50%, typically at the beginning of a mission.
Games using Unreal Engine 5 are hard to tune, but you can eke out some extra performance if you know where to cut. I’ll go through all the settings and what they change here, so you can tweak the game to your own specific PC. For example, if you have a weak CPU, you’re probably going to want to lower things like hidden objects and effect quality first.
Windowing Mode:This will change how the window is displayed when you’re playing the game. There are only three options. Fullscreen will make your computer only render the game, which could cause problems if you try to alt-tab. Borderless Window is what I like to call ‘fake fullscreen’ because it takes up your entire display while still rendering the Windows desktop beneath it. Then, Windowed mode just puts the game in a standard Window, where you can see the task bar. I’d choose Fullscreen if you’re on a single-monitor setup, and Borderless if you have multiple monitors or you alt-tab frequently.
Anti-Aliasing and Upscaling:Back in the day, there was a genuine debate over which type of upscaling folks should use, but these days, I’d just pick depending on who makes your graphics card. AMD users should use FSR, Nvidia users should use DLSS, and XeSS for Intel GPUs. This is a game where I’d recommend pretty much everyone to use some kind of upscaling to maximize performance.
Upscaling Quality:This changes the scale at which the game will be upscaled. Luckily, each GPU vendor uses the same scale, so I’d pick one depending on your native resolution. My rule of thumb is Performance for 4K, Balanced for 1440p, and Quality for 1080p.
Frame Generation: This uses AI to generate new frames and sandwiches them between natively rendered frames, which increases your frame rate. This does come at the cost of latency, but in a turn-based game like Star Wars Zero Company, that really doesn’t matter that much. Turn it on if you want a smoother image.
Nvidia Reflex/AMD Anti-Lag/XeSS LL:This setting will change depending on your GPU vendor but the underlying technology is similar across the board. These zero out your rendering queue, which lowers latency by only rendering frames as your CPU delivers them to your graphics card. Turn it on, there’s no reason not to.
Shadow Quality: If you’re GPU bound and struggling to get frames, Shadows are generally the first thing I cut. This will change how accurate shadows are, and even on low, they look halfway decent here (again, Unreal has a problem with scalability). Mid-Range PC: High, Handheld: Low
Global Illumination:This changes the quality of indirect lighting. This is another setting that mostly just affects your graphics card, so lower it if you’re GPU bound and looking for better performance. But if your graphics card isn’t even sitting at 100% utilization most of the time, this probably isn’t what’s causing your performance woes. Keep in mind though, that the High and Ultra settings here are using ray tracing, so going from medium to high will hit your GPU hard. Mid-Range PC: Medium; Handheld: Low
Reflections:Just like with GI, reflections are mostly a GPU-bound thing and Bit Reactor is using ray tracing here too. Just by virtue of this being a science-fiction game, there are a lot of reflective surfaces, so this can be pretty impactful to your performance, especially on a weaker GPU. Unless you have a high-end card, I’d keep this at medium. Mid-Range PC: Medium; Handheld: Low
Post Processing:I have a love-hate relationship with post-processing effects, and I’m not super happy that Bit Reactor rolled all of them into one setting. This will change everything from motion blur to bloom. This honestly won’t affect your performance that much, but if you hate motion blur, it might be worth turning this down just to save yourself a headache. Mid-Range PC: Your Choice; Handheld: Your Choice
Textures:This changes the resolution that textures are rendered at. This will mostly hit VRAM, so adjust accordingly. My tip would be to have a performance monitor up during one mission to see how much VRAM you’re using, and only lower this if you’re at the upper limit. Or, just turn it on Ultra if you have 10GB or more, and turn it to medium or low if you have less than 8GB.
Effect Quality:This will change how detailed visual effects are. This will affect everything from explosions to debris to lasers shooting through the sky. This is something that will hit your CPU, so if you’re being bottlenecked there, this is one of the settings you should cut. Mid-Range PC: High; Handheld: Low
Shading Quality:In this game, shading quality is essentially the same as mesh quality. It’ll change how detailed objects in the world are. Just like with textures, this is something I’d lower if you’re running out of VRAM. Mid-Range PC: High; Handheld: Low
View Distance:This is kind of a funny setting to even have in this game. This just changes how far out you can see details on objects from. But because of how small most of the arenas are, this is purely an aesthetic choice, and so I’m obliged to turn this down before most of the other settings. Mid-Range PC: Medium; Handheld: Low
Hidden Objects Detail: This changes how detailed objects that are currently hidden are. This will hit your CPU, so it’s something you should turn down if you are bottlenecked. Mid-Range PC: Simplified; Handheld: Simplified
Environment Geometry Detail:This is just a toggle that’ll change the geometry of models in the scene. Bit Reactor’s tooltip claims that newer GPUs won’t really see a performance benefit from turning it off, so I’d just leave it on unless you have an older PC – think more than 5years old. Mid-range PC: On; Handheld: Off
Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra
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