October 9th Addendum: A couple weeks after I made my review, the game has seen a consistent stream of updates and hotfixes, some of which addressing the issues I've laid out in this review and others I've encountered after publishing it. While I'm not interested in following Dale & Dawson in the long run, the dev team worked hard to fix up the game, and I feel it should be acknowledged as such here since some time has passed since my initial critique.

The recommendation status and the text of my original review will remain unchanged, for preservation purposes and how my negative feelings for the game's worst aspects have not changed by much.

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Original Review
This game is rough, I'm going to be honest. It's a dice roll on whether you'll complete a full round on this game, the butthurt host closes the server after getting fired, or the server's connection kills itself mid-game. The latter of which has happened to me more often than I'd like, even with a solid internet connection on my end. Mid-game lag and its effects on gameplay are some of my biggest issues with Dale & Dawson - there have been times when I left a server after everyone was standing in place and doors did not open after two to three minutes, and even when it recovers, the game becomes wildly unplayable. You'll see players walk through walls and cubicles after the lag spike, some prompts such as sitting either don't work or bug out and won't immediately work, proximity chat becomes more troublesome because there'll be people talking in the same room that you can't hear because they're like 5-10 ft. away from you. You'll even see some people levitating outside the building.

A myriad of other issues I have with the game:

• Tasks requiring to be completed in order hurts Slackers with the Bandwidth Bandit task. If you do not get the master key as soon as the game starts or the Janitor wasn't a Slacker themselves, there is no way to complete that task because the server room will essentially be locked the whole game. This limitation especially hurts when you have one or two other tasks after Bandwidth Bandit, as the last two opportunities to complete it run the risk of lying to the Manager about having a drawer task or RNG causing the server outage. In my opinion, it wouldn't be an issue if you could complete tasks out of order.
  
• Refreshing the Manager replacement votes when meetings are called/ended should be a toggleable setting. It is the only option players have to counteract bad managers; if that's invalidated, players will leave the game. The Manager role, in general, has a negative reputation in the community for multiple reasons, though this one in particular stands out like a sore thumb.
  
• I can't entirely agree with another reviewer's sentiment about tasks not mattering—however, the progression bar shifts between sides rather slowly. Your mileage may vary.
  
• Doors are obnoxious in this game. Why yes, I love it when the break room door decides to have a spasm, knocking me back while opening and closing ten times, repeating the same sound effect. At least make this less unbearable.
  
• Finally found a lobby, but the office never loads? Tough luck, pal. Go find another lobby, I guess, lol.
  
• The computer mouse movement (the mouse you use to navigate the emails, games, and notepads on your workstation's computer, not your IRL mouse) could be better. Playing Minesweeper or drawing is a bit of a chore because of how wonky it can be.
  
• No in-game options for control bindings (save for push to talk) for a 2020s PC game is not ideal. I can't beat around the bush about this. Devs should prioritize bug fixes, but I can't ignore such an omission.
  
• This is more of a personal gripe than everything else here, but there have been games I found incredibly boring and too predictable. For Dale & Dawson, I feel you have to make your own fun.

There's no good reason for me to recommend Dale & Dawson over other social deduction games now; it's too bland compared to its contemporaries. I would sooner recommend Among Us, Goose Goose Duck, Project Winter, Town of Salem, and even games I've only seen videos of, like Perfect Heist 2, Oh Deer, LOCKDOWN Protocol, and the Deducto games. I'll likely put in a couple more hours before uninstalling and waiting for more updates, but I'm disappointed I came away from this game with such a negative impression.

The community itself has been compared to CoD lobbies a few times, though in fairness the devs have actually gone out of their way to address this on several fronts. There's plenty of reviews that already mentioned this, even positive reviews. I primarily wrote this review from the perspective of illustrating my problems with Dale & Dawson gameplay wise.