The game is unique and interesting, definitely worth a try, but it has a lot of problems. The Good: - This game put me in the zone of managing a police force. I felt the strain of needing to balance competing interests. I got to know some of my officers and some of the places and people in the city. - This game has interesting small moral choices that go beyond the simple good or evil you see in other games. - I like the art style and sound design and I feel it fits well with the story. The Bad: - This game has a major pacing problem, everything is so slow, from the dialog to the animations to the gameplay. I understand that they are trying to build atmosphere but sitting through the same animations every single day gets very tedious. The pace of the days themselves is also too slow, I felt like I was waiting around a lot. - None of the main narrative decisions actually matter and the game doesn't do a good job of hiding this fact. - The difficulty is a bit too variable. I felt like the game swung between being very easy and being way too punishing for small mistakes or even random events.
TLDR: Great gameplay and level design but the story is irritating and you don't get a lot of content for the price. The good: I gave this 4 stars because I think it is worth a try. The gameplay combines a turn based feel with time pressure and action. I have never played a game quite like this and it is a lot of fun. You will find yourself thinking of time itself as a resource and thinking tactically as well as learning to aim and lead shots in a world where time isn't fixed. It makes you think about time in a unique way. The levels are well designed and you can tell a lot of thought was put into enemy and weapon positioning to create one or more optimal paths and it is a lot of fun to experiment and find these. The bad: The story is not just poorly written but it actively interferes with your experience. Every few levels I was whisked away into a story sequence and roll my eyes. Rather than a story the game just takes you aside and harasses you for a bit before you can get to the rest of the content. It is played as creepy or meta but I have no investment in my character whatsoever and there is no agency at all. There is not even the illusion agency to be pulled away from your character to make a point. The story sequences are little more than cut scenes that require you to do something to make them go faster. It feels like the story sequences are intentionally slow and unskippable to pad out the playthrough time.