This Is the Police 2 asks you to run a police department in a town that does not want order. It is a management game, a visual novel, a turn-based tactical challenge and a puzzle at once, and it rarely lets you forget any of those jobs. Weappy Studio built it, THQ Nordic published it, and it landed in 2018 on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Mac and Linux, with an iOS version following in September 2019.
Trailer, via THQ Nordic.
Sharpwood, 1987
The setting is Sharpwood, a fictional town in 1987 where neighbors know each other by name and keep their traditions, however barbaric. Smugglers, gangs and screaming populists live there. Despair grows like a cancer, hand in hand with violence.
Into that mess comes Lilly Reed, the new sheriff, voiced by Sarah Hamilton of The Longest Journey. Her subordinates are uncouth men who are not used to taking commands from a young woman. She is trying to hold order and peace together.
Then a stranger calling himself Warren Nash arrives. Nobody knows whether he brings salvation or perdition. The player controls him — he is Jack Boyd from the first game, hiding from federal agents under a new name.
The Neckties Ambush
The plot opens hard. Sheriff Wells and two other Sharpwood Sheriff’s Department deputies investigate a suspected base of the Neckties, a gang of drug traffickers. All three are killed in an ambush. That is why Reed gets promoted.
It is a clean setup for a game about a department that starts short on people and trust.
Cops With Fears and Prejudices
This Is the Police 2 mixes adventure and management, then adds mechanics that push both the strategic and tactical halves further. Managing equipment and tracking individual skills is not enough. Every challenge wants the player’s direct participation, and outcomes turn on each decision.
The change that matters most: subordinates are no longer a resource. They are living people with strengths, weaknesses, fears and prejudices, and you have to reckon with all of it to survive.
Assigning Skills and Equipment
The game runs on imagery and text over an isometric map. You allocate officers with specific skills and equipment to each situation, and tactical decision-making decides intense confrontations where resources are limited and officer safety is on the line.
Turn-based tactical combat arrives when you respond to crimes or hit encounters. There, you take direct control of your officers.
A new mechanic called the “Sheriff’s Department” puts you in charge of the sheriff’s staff, their personal problems and their loyalty. Relationships and trust are how you keep a capable, motivated force.
What Each Layer Costs You
| Layer | What it asks of you | What it gives back |
|---|---|---|
| Management | Assign officers, equipment, skills | A force that functions |
| Sheriff’s Department | Handle staff problems, earn loyalty | Cops who trust you |
| Turn-based tactics | Direct control in confrontations | Surviving the encounter |
| Nonlinear narrative | Live with your choices | A story you shaped |
The table is the whole argument of the game in miniature: four systems, four bills to pay.
Where the Ambition Slips
The range here is real, and so is the drag. Four systems sharing one screen means the game is often asking you to care about a staffing spreadsheet and a firefight in the same breath, and the noir mood that carried the first game gets thinned across the extra mechanics.
The best idea in This Is the Police 2 is the one it states plainly: cops are people, not pieces. When the game remembers that, the moral dilemmas land. When it forgets, you are just moving equipment around Sharpwood.
The published critical aggregate sits at 6.3/10 across six outlets. That feels right — a sequel with a sharper premise than its execution, worth playing for the staff system and the ambush that starts it all.
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