This Is the Police

Group Project Leader Simulator where half the group is useless and the other half have drinking problems. Seriously, though: a unique, frustrating and compelling game. The sublime blues/ragtime soundtrack is worth the asking price on its own.

Short visual novel with minor flavour choices filled with an unskippable minigame that gets repetitive about reaching half the game. The mechanics hooked me enough at the beginning, but they got boring and repetitive something between half and last third of the game. This could have been done on purpose, as to make the player feel the same way than the MC about his job, but then a "Fuck it, they can care themselves" button could have been added to skip the rest of the day. The major disappointment from this game cames from the fact that while promoting "choice" there is only one ending (just different flavour text and minigame), and a crappy one to say the least. The issue is that the way you play (either extremely corrupt, either mostly good cop) has no repercussion to the game. Not even the character progression makes sense. He gets an attitude, he has resources and allies, yet allows himself to be played out (hey! you can choose by who). You are forced to a cliché bad ending.

A cool police-management game that I would recommend to players who enjoy job simulator games like "Papers Please" or "Beat Cop". This game does a great job of putting you in the shoes of your typical 80s movie police chief where the mayor is constantly on your ass, the mafia wants a favor from you and your policemen will want the day off because it's their dog's birthday. The gameplay consists of assigning your policeforce in a clever manner as manpowwer is short and problems will arise with every new day - it's not so much about acing it everytime but more of making the best of bad situations. This is one of those games where your forces get killed permanently so making choices feels impactful and keeps things on edge. For example you can send unexperienced cops on a difficult assignment which possibly kills them or you can send your most experienced officers thus not being able to send them on other assignments that might come up. Mini Events like murder investigations and a rampant serial killer keep the game fresh and interesting. Add to the mix the introduction of different factions that you have to keep satisfied or you will find yourself having a grenade-breakfast. The big criticism is the very lackluster ending and the abandonment of various plot points. Having a bad ending would be "OK" for most simulator games but this game is very "story-heavy" and can take up to 20 hours to finish, so by then you are invested in the characters and story so much that the ending feels like a fist in the gut, putting some cocaine in your pockets and leaving a gun next to your corpse.

As many others have already pointed out it's a good story, and I definitely enjoyed this game. Unfortunately the main gameplay can be a bit tedious and sometimes too RNG-y, and there's also quite a few gameplay bugs (though most of them are not too big, and there weren't any gamebreakers or crashes).

I saw the second part of this game with same genres having tactical turn-based combat and thought this would have it too, but it didn't. It clearly doesn't mention it either, and this game is really good regardless. I enjoyed the art too. It's just that it seems like the first and second part are very different in gameplay. And that just makes it not my cup of tea, as I don't like playing games solely for story. But, I would still recommend it to anyone who does enjoy a nice relaxing interactive story game.