This is the Police 2 is heavily story focused and tells an interesting, slow, and uncomfortable story of fetization of power and those with it, toxic masculinity, and people doing or trying to convince themselves that they are doing the right thing often while abusing the power given to them to combat other people abusing their own power. Rarely getting into how the police force as a whole abuses the town through their normal actions, you won't be causing accidents with speeding cameras, meeting quotas of black people to arrest, no stated abuse of the sex workers you arrest, and your officers aren't framing people for crimes on their own time. It's not a story about the systemic problems of the wider organization. The plot primarily follows the main character of the previous game, former police chief Jack Boyd, now on the run and hiding out in a small snowy town of the poor and forgotten middle America in the late 80s. A town filled with a cartoonish level of crime, murders, gang wars, sacrificial pagan cults, and Christians wanted to purge the nonbelievers, and all with a new sheriff that is unable to control the men working under her.
Voice work has the the characters sounding like they are always on the edge of a breakdown if their own sudden monologue become incapable of convincing them to keep going. Everyone is perfectly acted, even when overacted, and practically everyone is unlikable adding to the uncomfortable nature of the narrative. The scenes are primarily done in motion comic style panels with characters that are given no eyes and at times appear completely faceless, there are random lengthy dialogue bits about what color and how long the mold has been showing on the roof of the dilapidated police station, even done in a motion comic style it effectively allows panels, sounds, and darkness to linger long enough to convey the mood of the scene. The style is unique for a game and striking. Even the moments that could easily be cut or shortened were such amusingly strange or foreboding things to watch that I wouldn't want them to be. The soundtrack is excellent, varied, and perfectly matches the tone of the game.
The main gameplay involves looking at an over-world map of the town as you answer emergency and investigation calls that have you choosing what officers to send on the call and if you want to send your volunteer sniper with them, or if you think the call is a prank or a mistake that you should just ignore. The prank calls are often pretty easy to identify by what kind of information is being given and who is giving it. There are certainly some Karen wants to speak with the manager style call ins. You will choose what and how many officers to send based on their professionalism level with each calling having a minimum required amount, what their skills are and what you believe you will need, what equipment they each carry, and how much energy they have. Skills consist of strength, intelligence, speed, stealth, shooting, and negotiation with each having three levels. Every call gives an officer 10 professionalism if they were just there for the ride, 30 if they were the one that solved the situation, or -10 if the offender wasn't caught. Officers can become tired or drunk which can cause them to crash their cars leading to a few days of injury if they are sent out in those conditions. Once your officers arrive you get a description of what is going on and then choose an officer to take on of three options that might either end the event or continue it with a new series of choices until it is solved. An event might end with an escaped, killed, or captured offender, a safe, wounded, or killed victim, and possibly a wounded or killed officer. As you help townspeople you will also unlock options where you can pay to train your officers in each skill, help them to end their alcohol addiction, recover their stamina, or you can gain access to stores to buy and sell given or confiscated materials.
What you will need in calls often makes sense based on what kind of call it was, if two otherwise normal people are fighting a negotiation skill will likely work, if someone seems to be trying to beat someone to death you will likely need more strength and possibly a baton or taser to deal with the situation, armed suspects might be negotiated with but might be better dealt with stealth or a stun grenade, car chases are unlikely to need your personal strength or speed skill, investigations need intelligence, and a call sending you to respond to someone armed and with a body count will likely need an officer with a high shooting skill and possibly a taser for a better outcome. When receiving call for favor from town residents they will tell you what they need your officers to be good at and if they need them to being anything. Calls can range from being extremely dark, to sad, to being completely ridiculous and amusing.
When a day starts you can assign available batons, tasers, taser ammo, stun grenade, shockers, and pepper spray to your officers with each one having four open slots and each one always carrying a gun and knife. Each new day will likely have officers not show up to work, ask for the day of for mostly ridiculous reasons, and disloyal officers that refuse to wear their full uniform will only come to work every other day. You will also assign your more intelligent officers to investigations, Each investigation can have 1-3 people assigned to it with one looking for clues and the others looking into the 2-3 potential suspects. You will have to look at the clues and piece together the events that took place for the suspect you believe did the crime before being able to arrest them. There are two larger gangs where you will follow a chain of crimes by asking the right questions of the gang members you capture, or torture if you fail to ask the right questions, that will lead you to missions where you arrest the leader of the gang.
Officer skills also come into play during the tactical turn based events. Some days will have a hostage situation, bomb threat, gang assault, or robbery that will need you to choose officers to respond to call. Once they arrive each officer can choose four skills based on what they have unlocked through their skill ranks. They might be able to move more spaces, get an extra turn if they remain undiscovered, hide better and with more cover, see further, go into overwatch, shoot faster or more accurately, locate and disarm traps and bombs, negotiate for more time in hostage situations, hold up and ask criminals to surrender, break open or silently open windows and doors, jump fences, etc. Combat is lethal, every shot allows you to aim for the head, body, arm, or legs. Headshots are kills, body shots down a person and put them in a bleed out timer, and leg and arm shots create a slower bleed out timer but prevent either movement or shooting while leaving the combatant active. You never want to get into a gunfight as it is better to use stealth to get into range where you can hold up or stun with gadgets so you can handcuff your enemies, both safer and leads to a better outcome. Sending a cop that isn't loyal to you will cause them to be AI controlled, they will basically just run up and shoot at people causing everyone to get killed, meaning it shouldn't even have been an option to send them in the first place. It's overall a decent system with tense combat if you end up in it or are forced into it, stealth is pretty simplistic, some skills are clearly better than others, and some skills that would be cool in a more focused game are never really utilized. The sequel to this, Rebel Cops, made an entire game focused on this turn based stealth combat with additions. Each tactical stage allows you to retry it, so messing up or being bad at it won't cause you to have to suffer a huge loss or to replay the rest of the day.
Something I can certainly praise this game for is that when it comes to your decisions during events it is often quite clear what would be a good or bad idea, what skills would effect your options, allowing having the right equipment and using it to almost always be a successful option, and the events that allow you options outside of your normal skill range usually give you all the background information you could need to make your decision or are only set dressing. You will never get a random left, right, straight option where two of the choices lead to failure and random death. Though I can't say the same for some of the game's overworld events where taking on a cleaning lady can make one of your officers retire to marry her or where taking in some pound dogs can either lead to two of your cops playing with them for fun or one of your cops getting bit while trying to pet them and instantly dying. If something just utterly ridiculous does happen that is out of your control, you could even just reload the fairly short days to either make a different decision or for the random event to play out differently.
It would be nice if this loyalty and ridiculous number of calls-ins system was mostly dropped in favor of giving you fewer officers with more interesting and varied personalities and backstories. As it is now you do have a few characters with unique quirks, typically only shown with an annoying habit or one unique line they say. Two work very well together and double each others professionalism score, two are germaphobes, one won't use batons, one steals things, one likes to play dress up and won't go on tactical missions, one refuses to go out on call more than once a day, a man refuses to work with women, a woman refuses to work with less professional men but doubles everyone's experience when sent out in all female squads, and a few characters tend to be naturally loyal or disloyal or start out as alcoholics. All of them also have their own appearance, with most definitely looking cooler in their street clothes and hair when they are disloyal to you, you both gain and lose when they finally put on their officers hat that they respect you.
The game is unfortunately, full of half baked ideas that, luckily, effect so little or it is so easy to get around them that most do little to sully the experience but they do interfere thematically. The collection of goods and money needed to continue the game or to complete side activities becomes pointless as once you have access to two of the shops money no longer means anything as you can just buy leather shoes and chocolate from one store to sell to the other at 2-4 times the price. Money no longer being an option and two activities you can pay for to help with stamina or to raise loyalty essentially make stamina meters, loyalty, and to an extent even call ins have no real effect on you. One of the shops will even sell you police equipment which you are unlikely to need as you can already buy more by doing well in main activities, this and the lack of a need for money makes all side missions where town resents and organizations request you to do terrible things pointless. Sitting on $200,000 with everyone loving me after a couple weeks kind of hurts the narrative of desperately trying to acquire money and power. You can refuse to perform the more questionable actions that people want out of you, but you can never take the good option and arrest the person making the request, and the linear narrative of the game gives you no reason to believe your character would have the morals to deny many requests. Though, rolling in money and trust from all my other good work did allow me to take the moral high ground of ignoring any calls to bring in sex workers or recreational marijuana users.
There is a brief point where the station's cook leaves and you need to spend a combination of station and your own money to feed the on duty officers, some of them will make requests, some that contradict other officers, and not getting someone the french fries they wanted that day might cause them to lose their loyalty to you. This strange distraction is likely over a few days later as you are given the option to pay for catering for the rest of the game. Most of the tactical missions happen on each day but two force you to plan for four days, assign officers to roles, and gather information, this would all be great except that it forces skill and equipment choices on characters and adds in an extremely odd system where the chosen six characters are unable to come to work until the assault happens but they are unable to be used at work but they can be taken off the team and just added back to it if you want to use them in a normal day but taking them off gives them no equipment for the day. Even this really doesn't matter as you will likely have more than enough officers to just not assign anyone until right before the mission happens, it's just a very what the hell were they thinking kind of system.
It ended up being a lot more interesting that I thought it would be, with some good ideas, some common ideas that were better realized than most games, and some bad ideas that for the most part came together in a way where none of them caused many real issues with the overall experience.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1249818269659234304
Voice work has the the characters sounding like they are always on the edge of a breakdown if their own sudden monologue become incapable of convincing them to keep going. Everyone is perfectly acted, even when overacted, and practically everyone is unlikable adding to the uncomfortable nature of the narrative. The scenes are primarily done in motion comic style panels with characters that are given no eyes and at times appear completely faceless, there are random lengthy dialogue bits about what color and how long the mold has been showing on the roof of the dilapidated police station, even done in a motion comic style it effectively allows panels, sounds, and darkness to linger long enough to convey the mood of the scene. The style is unique for a game and striking. Even the moments that could easily be cut or shortened were such amusingly strange or foreboding things to watch that I wouldn't want them to be. The soundtrack is excellent, varied, and perfectly matches the tone of the game.
The main gameplay involves looking at an over-world map of the town as you answer emergency and investigation calls that have you choosing what officers to send on the call and if you want to send your volunteer sniper with them, or if you think the call is a prank or a mistake that you should just ignore. The prank calls are often pretty easy to identify by what kind of information is being given and who is giving it. There are certainly some Karen wants to speak with the manager style call ins. You will choose what and how many officers to send based on their professionalism level with each calling having a minimum required amount, what their skills are and what you believe you will need, what equipment they each carry, and how much energy they have. Skills consist of strength, intelligence, speed, stealth, shooting, and negotiation with each having three levels. Every call gives an officer 10 professionalism if they were just there for the ride, 30 if they were the one that solved the situation, or -10 if the offender wasn't caught. Officers can become tired or drunk which can cause them to crash their cars leading to a few days of injury if they are sent out in those conditions. Once your officers arrive you get a description of what is going on and then choose an officer to take on of three options that might either end the event or continue it with a new series of choices until it is solved. An event might end with an escaped, killed, or captured offender, a safe, wounded, or killed victim, and possibly a wounded or killed officer. As you help townspeople you will also unlock options where you can pay to train your officers in each skill, help them to end their alcohol addiction, recover their stamina, or you can gain access to stores to buy and sell given or confiscated materials.
What you will need in calls often makes sense based on what kind of call it was, if two otherwise normal people are fighting a negotiation skill will likely work, if someone seems to be trying to beat someone to death you will likely need more strength and possibly a baton or taser to deal with the situation, armed suspects might be negotiated with but might be better dealt with stealth or a stun grenade, car chases are unlikely to need your personal strength or speed skill, investigations need intelligence, and a call sending you to respond to someone armed and with a body count will likely need an officer with a high shooting skill and possibly a taser for a better outcome. When receiving call for favor from town residents they will tell you what they need your officers to be good at and if they need them to being anything. Calls can range from being extremely dark, to sad, to being completely ridiculous and amusing.
When a day starts you can assign available batons, tasers, taser ammo, stun grenade, shockers, and pepper spray to your officers with each one having four open slots and each one always carrying a gun and knife. Each new day will likely have officers not show up to work, ask for the day of for mostly ridiculous reasons, and disloyal officers that refuse to wear their full uniform will only come to work every other day. You will also assign your more intelligent officers to investigations, Each investigation can have 1-3 people assigned to it with one looking for clues and the others looking into the 2-3 potential suspects. You will have to look at the clues and piece together the events that took place for the suspect you believe did the crime before being able to arrest them. There are two larger gangs where you will follow a chain of crimes by asking the right questions of the gang members you capture, or torture if you fail to ask the right questions, that will lead you to missions where you arrest the leader of the gang.
Officer skills also come into play during the tactical turn based events. Some days will have a hostage situation, bomb threat, gang assault, or robbery that will need you to choose officers to respond to call. Once they arrive each officer can choose four skills based on what they have unlocked through their skill ranks. They might be able to move more spaces, get an extra turn if they remain undiscovered, hide better and with more cover, see further, go into overwatch, shoot faster or more accurately, locate and disarm traps and bombs, negotiate for more time in hostage situations, hold up and ask criminals to surrender, break open or silently open windows and doors, jump fences, etc. Combat is lethal, every shot allows you to aim for the head, body, arm, or legs. Headshots are kills, body shots down a person and put them in a bleed out timer, and leg and arm shots create a slower bleed out timer but prevent either movement or shooting while leaving the combatant active. You never want to get into a gunfight as it is better to use stealth to get into range where you can hold up or stun with gadgets so you can handcuff your enemies, both safer and leads to a better outcome. Sending a cop that isn't loyal to you will cause them to be AI controlled, they will basically just run up and shoot at people causing everyone to get killed, meaning it shouldn't even have been an option to send them in the first place. It's overall a decent system with tense combat if you end up in it or are forced into it, stealth is pretty simplistic, some skills are clearly better than others, and some skills that would be cool in a more focused game are never really utilized. The sequel to this, Rebel Cops, made an entire game focused on this turn based stealth combat with additions. Each tactical stage allows you to retry it, so messing up or being bad at it won't cause you to have to suffer a huge loss or to replay the rest of the day.
Something I can certainly praise this game for is that when it comes to your decisions during events it is often quite clear what would be a good or bad idea, what skills would effect your options, allowing having the right equipment and using it to almost always be a successful option, and the events that allow you options outside of your normal skill range usually give you all the background information you could need to make your decision or are only set dressing. You will never get a random left, right, straight option where two of the choices lead to failure and random death. Though I can't say the same for some of the game's overworld events where taking on a cleaning lady can make one of your officers retire to marry her or where taking in some pound dogs can either lead to two of your cops playing with them for fun or one of your cops getting bit while trying to pet them and instantly dying. If something just utterly ridiculous does happen that is out of your control, you could even just reload the fairly short days to either make a different decision or for the random event to play out differently.
It would be nice if this loyalty and ridiculous number of calls-ins system was mostly dropped in favor of giving you fewer officers with more interesting and varied personalities and backstories. As it is now you do have a few characters with unique quirks, typically only shown with an annoying habit or one unique line they say. Two work very well together and double each others professionalism score, two are germaphobes, one won't use batons, one steals things, one likes to play dress up and won't go on tactical missions, one refuses to go out on call more than once a day, a man refuses to work with women, a woman refuses to work with less professional men but doubles everyone's experience when sent out in all female squads, and a few characters tend to be naturally loyal or disloyal or start out as alcoholics. All of them also have their own appearance, with most definitely looking cooler in their street clothes and hair when they are disloyal to you, you both gain and lose when they finally put on their officers hat that they respect you.
The game is unfortunately, full of half baked ideas that, luckily, effect so little or it is so easy to get around them that most do little to sully the experience but they do interfere thematically. The collection of goods and money needed to continue the game or to complete side activities becomes pointless as once you have access to two of the shops money no longer means anything as you can just buy leather shoes and chocolate from one store to sell to the other at 2-4 times the price. Money no longer being an option and two activities you can pay for to help with stamina or to raise loyalty essentially make stamina meters, loyalty, and to an extent even call ins have no real effect on you. One of the shops will even sell you police equipment which you are unlikely to need as you can already buy more by doing well in main activities, this and the lack of a need for money makes all side missions where town resents and organizations request you to do terrible things pointless. Sitting on $200,000 with everyone loving me after a couple weeks kind of hurts the narrative of desperately trying to acquire money and power. You can refuse to perform the more questionable actions that people want out of you, but you can never take the good option and arrest the person making the request, and the linear narrative of the game gives you no reason to believe your character would have the morals to deny many requests. Though, rolling in money and trust from all my other good work did allow me to take the moral high ground of ignoring any calls to bring in sex workers or recreational marijuana users.
There is a brief point where the station's cook leaves and you need to spend a combination of station and your own money to feed the on duty officers, some of them will make requests, some that contradict other officers, and not getting someone the french fries they wanted that day might cause them to lose their loyalty to you. This strange distraction is likely over a few days later as you are given the option to pay for catering for the rest of the game. Most of the tactical missions happen on each day but two force you to plan for four days, assign officers to roles, and gather information, this would all be great except that it forces skill and equipment choices on characters and adds in an extremely odd system where the chosen six characters are unable to come to work until the assault happens but they are unable to be used at work but they can be taken off the team and just added back to it if you want to use them in a normal day but taking them off gives them no equipment for the day. Even this really doesn't matter as you will likely have more than enough officers to just not assign anyone until right before the mission happens, it's just a very what the hell were they thinking kind of system.
It ended up being a lot more interesting that I thought it would be, with some good ideas, some common ideas that were better realized than most games, and some bad ideas that for the most part came together in a way where none of them caused many real issues with the overall experience.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1249818269659234304