DOUGH: A Crime Strategy RPG Reviews

impossible to play bad optimization

I come from 4X games, always been looking for a the same experience with the ol' Gangster world, this game almost nails it!! I can easily recommend it as the developer is actively listening to the community and applying changes. The initial experience will be of a very Early Access game but dont let this fool you, as you deepen into the diverse mechanics of the game, you will find A LOT of tools and options to manage your crew and resources. There are missions for your gangsters, you can also train them, prepare booze runs and grow your Family while your associates are out there "earning" goods for you. Do give it a try if you are like me, coming from Paradox games and Gangsters 2 !

I have been hunting for a good crime management game for ages and this almost scratches the itch. The game has a lot of potential but I don't think I can recommend in this early state. The UI is not so good, and missing a lot of features. For instance, the "sale" menu doesn't tell you how much you can sell goods for per unit. The "explore" option leaves a lot of question marks on your map, forcing you to individually inspect each location if you want to do a crime there. I am not sure if this is a bug or feature, but multiple times I have lost associates/employees seemingly at random. Because there is no events log I can scroll through, it looks like they just disappear. Once, my employee disappeared and took all of my money with him. I lost other associates seemingly at random. This is the sort of thing that should demand a game-pause pop-up but as far as I can tell, there was no notification at all (or the notification was lost in the fast-moving message queue.) The events are dull and repetitive, not bringing much to the table except the opportunity to gain or lose $10 (meaningless after the first few hours.) Plus, each has a short, unskippable animation that gets really annoying when you already know exactly how the event will play out. The early game is also pretty rough for a lot of the character backgrounds. A thief/muscle character has a lot of early money-making opportunities but when I tried to make a businessman, I was basically struggling to survive. I did not get a chance to experience the more interesting gang mechanics because I was so put off by the aforementioned issues. It feels like there might be a good game inside here somewhere, but Dough is not meeting me halfway. I might check in on the game later to see how it has improved but for now I say wait until the official release.