Policenauts undeniably has plenty of style. This game still looks great to my eyes even today, with great looking art, fantasic music and top quality voice acting.
The story is generally quite engaging, however almost every plot beat was telegraphed in a heavy-handed way so I was never really surprised by anything. Mostly it was just frustrating how clueless the main cast is to all the obvious hints around them.
The main character, Jonathan, is a completely irredeemable sex pest. Although I tried to avoid engaging with this aspect of the game where I could, some of it is simply unavoidable and other times if you just happen to click on the wrong body-part you will trigger some creepy comment or other. Seemingly you can even grope most of the female characters in the game as well with essentially no consequences. Even when Jonathan makes lewd comments about his best friend's teenage daughter upon meeting her for the first time, he barely gets a rebuke in response.
It is very impressive just how many things in the environment have dialogue written for them, there is a huge amount of text in this game and if you take the time to explore there are many little pieces of flavour and worldbuilding all around you (including the in-game glossary with a bunch of information on things people discuss in game).
In terms of actual gameplay, the vast majority of the time you will spend simply talked to people and looking at things like in any standard visual novel. There are a few shooting sections, especially toward the end of the game. These seem difficult but become trivially easy when you realise you can simply press L and R to lock onto targets - you can also play these with a light gun if you have a CRT television.
There is also a section of the game with some finicky puzzles which you have to repeat over and over again in the event of a mistake - this can get very tedious but does actually help to build tension as you approach the end of the gauntlet.
Many of the longer spoken dialogue sections simply can't be paused as far as I can tell, so I ended up having to replay a long section when I got interrupted at one point. Being able to pause any time is a huge quality of life improvement found in most modern games - but certainly not the first time I have experienced this in an older one!
Despite my issues with the game, I was ultimately invested in the story and characters and when the credits rolled I was satisfied with the conclusion.
The story is generally quite engaging, however almost every plot beat was telegraphed in a heavy-handed way so I was never really surprised by anything. Mostly it was just frustrating how clueless the main cast is to all the obvious hints around them.
The main character, Jonathan, is a completely irredeemable sex pest. Although I tried to avoid engaging with this aspect of the game where I could, some of it is simply unavoidable and other times if you just happen to click on the wrong body-part you will trigger some creepy comment or other. Seemingly you can even grope most of the female characters in the game as well with essentially no consequences. Even when Jonathan makes lewd comments about his best friend's teenage daughter upon meeting her for the first time, he barely gets a rebuke in response.
It is very impressive just how many things in the environment have dialogue written for them, there is a huge amount of text in this game and if you take the time to explore there are many little pieces of flavour and worldbuilding all around you (including the in-game glossary with a bunch of information on things people discuss in game).
In terms of actual gameplay, the vast majority of the time you will spend simply talked to people and looking at things like in any standard visual novel. There are a few shooting sections, especially toward the end of the game. These seem difficult but become trivially easy when you realise you can simply press L and R to lock onto targets - you can also play these with a light gun if you have a CRT television.
There is also a section of the game with some finicky puzzles which you have to repeat over and over again in the event of a mistake - this can get very tedious but does actually help to build tension as you approach the end of the gauntlet.
Many of the longer spoken dialogue sections simply can't be paused as far as I can tell, so I ended up having to replay a long section when I got interrupted at one point. Being able to pause any time is a huge quality of life improvement found in most modern games - but certainly not the first time I have experienced this in an older one!
Despite my issues with the game, I was ultimately invested in the story and characters and when the credits rolled I was satisfied with the conclusion.