For it's time this was a pretty ambitious pseudo RTS/tactics type of game where you manage a handful of units through combat scenarios with varying objectives. There was also a very slight base/personnel management between missiosn where you could 'train' units get them certified to use new ability/equipment and things like that. you also had a funding/overhead issue depending on your faction.

The game was pretty fun, had quite a bit of bugs. Some of them were interesting ways to cheat. The in game time management/clock was REALLY glitchy. Animations would not flow right and you could glitch the clock if you would clock to fire in certain rhythms... This would essentially let you cheat to gun down all enemey units before they could get a 'turn' Exploting this weird in game clock was perhaps the secret sauce to winning a lot of missions. (Your weapons would fire in bursts, the trick was to timing the rhythm so as to glitch out an animation and resulting in sustained fire?)

You could also do other exploits with the AI (especially if terrorists) Terrorists was actually the more fun one. the SWAT faction was rather predictable and you could game their AI in various ways. the best tactic was to give one of your T-boys all the assault rifles that the rest dropped. making him a sort of mule. and giving the rest endless explosives and grenades. Since they technically had 'no weapon' the swat team woul never open fire. This let you free to run around tossing grenades and booby trapping various doors and hallways as you saw fit. You could also have your 'gunner' let loose some fire to keep them on their toes, or glitch out the clock to freeze time so you could think about your next move.

Heck the game was of course (at least i'm going to assume) NOT meant to be played this way but it was a lot of fun finding ways to exploit the AI in this game.)

the missions had a lot of variety and were interesting enough to resolve the various quests within them, and they could unfold in various ways. sometimes they would send in helicopters, come in fast and hard, or slowly sneak in to free hostages/arrest, sometimes hostages would try and fight with you, or other things, it was somewhat random. But it had pretty good replay value (as i said i played it quite a bit) I stopped playing this game when i came across Jagged Alliance 2

The story and premise is kind of fun. There is a lot of voice acting, and fully voiced mission intros. Basho himself reminds me of the Heaven's Gate cult, and has this strange tone of cali weirdness anyway in the time the game was made.

The world has changed so much since this game was made.

fun fact: iirc all the mugshots and bios in the game were taken of and written by the people who were relatives/acquaintances of cops.