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1 Deceit 2 is the sequel to 2016’s “Deceit.” It originally launched as a pay-to-play title in September of 2023 and has now been released as a free-to-play title as of April 3rd, 2024, coinciding with the console launch. Compensation will be granted to those who previously purchased the game in the form of the Werewolf DLC and some in-game currency. Upon logging into the game, I received a choice of legacy skin for playing the first game.
Deception? In a game called deceit? Never…
Deceit 2 launched to a rocky reception at first, with players highlighting the switch from free to paid play, and changes to the mechanics; with a majority of players sticking with the first game over the second. Now that the game has launched free-to-play and on consoles, is it worth a go?
Gameplay
Deceit 2 is a 6-8 player social deduction horror game. While it has horror themes, it opts for more of a tension route than outright terror.
After queuing quickplay, you’re told what role you are and dropped into one of two maps. Players will be sorted into one of three roles, innocent, terror, or cursed. All with their own subclasses and objectives.
Innocent
The innocent’s objective is to win by either escaping the map or by finding and neutralizing the enemy factions. To escape from the two maps at present, players will have to complete tasks reminiscent of those of “among us” rather than its predecessor.
You’ll be flushing toilets, playing chess, and answering questions. I’ll be honest, these tasks felt significantly more engaging than those of among us, mostly due to most of them having an element of complexity. Now, I’m not sure how flushing 5 toilets is gonna get us out of this place, but it’s engaging. After finishing your tasks (tracked by a bar in the bottom left of your screen) players can then procure a key from the peddler. One player can buy this and from then it’s a high-intensity sprint to the finish, the terrors can track you in this phase, so be cautious.
Deduction?
The other way of winning as innocent felt a lot more subdued, for a social deduction game, there’s not a whole lot of deduction going on. More often than not my games would end due to either everyone being killed, or an escape. Wins through deduction is a rarity. This is mainly due to the “in-between” where you’ll be thrown into a phase where you can only barely see the outlines of other players, their character models disguised. This is where terrors can run off and transform with barely any consequence. There are items that can alert you to a terrors identity, but these were rarely used by other players.
To determine if it was a skill issue on my end even after ten hours of playtime, I talked to some other players on the discord who all seemed to share the same sentiment, deceit 2 lacks a strong deception element. There are inspection machines that can tell you if two players are on the same team or their roles. While interesting in concept I never saw these used strategically, with most players opting to use these straight off the bat and gain little information.
The Terrors
For terrors, the goal is simple, leave no prisoners. Players will do this through the art of persuasion, convincing innocents to eliminate their peers (which was surprisingly easy, most seemed to blindly follow, I’m pretty sure the Chewbacca defense worked at some point) and killing players during the in-between phase. Terrors can also risk activating a blood alter. This will hasten and prolong the arrival of the in-between as well as giving terrors an upgrade. Innocents can escape your grasp once you capture them depending on their sanity level. Sanity can be restored by being out of the in-between, a syringe item, and completing tasks.
While some grievances are attributed to player behavior. There are a lot of elements in deceit that are great in concept, but not so much in execution. You can’t really fault players for not really understanding what to do. Notably absent in Deceit 2 is a tutorial. Rather, walls of text telling you what each role does and how to win. A comprehensive, playable tutorial could greatly migrate this issue and enhance overall player accessibility.
Pursuit and evasion are quite thrilling, there is a similar possibility of looping terrors around the map as there is in dead by daylight. Terrors possess the ability to change the environment by destroying player-intractable cracks in walls, shaping the battlefield to their advantage. I found that both sides were enjoyable and required an element of player skill, but most of that skill is gameplay-focused rather than deception.
As of the free-to-play launch, there are two terrors, the free “Experiment” terror, as well as the DLC “Wyrtorn.” Each has 3 unique abilities.
The Experiment
This terror has three abilities, the basic attack that grabs innocents and drains their sanity. Rage is an ability that speeds up your movement and drains the sanity of players around you via a scream. The final ability is the light block. This allows you you block the stunning light of camera flashes, an item bought by innocents.
The experiment felt like a decent all-rounder character. Having an experiment will also spawn eyes around the map that drain innocents’ sanity when they are staring at them.
The Wyrtorn
The Wyrtorn is a werewolf that also has three abilities. A leaping basic attack, that grabs any players it hits. A sprint to move faster and a howl that both drains terror and shows the location of innocents that are close to your AI dog companions.
There is the argument that having the Werewolf is a little pay-to-win, which feels mostly true for public lobbies. If you’re playing with friends, however, and you’re the only person with the DLC…you can see how it might not be the best
The cursed
Cursed players can select between two roles, the mimic, which can transform into the role of a dead player. Being the more “neutral” curse. Or the chemist, a role which must poison everyone and hide before either getting voted or killed by terrors, a more proactive role.
Among the two roles, I had the most fun with the chemist. Neutralizing enemy ability usage and not being able to poison yourself added a layer of deception I felt terror gameplay was missing.
I was very mixed on the gameplay aspect of Deceit 2. While the title claims the mantle deception, I felt it shared elements of an asymmetrical game such as Dead by Daylight far more. The lack of a playable tutorial for newer players meant I, and most players could never truly experience what the developers had envisioned for a typical game playing out. Despite all this, it’s undeniable that Deceit 2 can be very fun.
Graphics & Audio
I had originally planned to review Deceit 2 on the console version. On PS5, the game originally ran at less than 30 frames per second on both maps. A patch to increase the frame rate was swiftly announced and implemented. While it was a slight improvement, it still would not run at 60 frames per second. After feeling nauseous due to the frame drops of Deceit 2, I switched to PC where the game ran fine. But the poor console performance is of note.
There’s not much to say when it comes to graphics and audio. The game looks and sounds as it should, nothing bad, nothing amazing. Proximity voice chat is implemented quite well. I found the echoed screams of my fellow innocents running away from terrors in the in-between hysterical.
Bugs & Glitches
Despite being a full launch, Deceit 2 is still riddled with bugs and issues. Even after originally switching to PC due to console performance issues, my game would crash every single round. I found out shortly after that this was due to AMD FSR. I, as well as my friends, had quite a few issues with voice chat occasionally not working. And more than once I came across a couple of bugged spots where innocents couldn’t get caught. As well as all these I would find many smaller bugs and performance issues in my time playing:
Longevity
Deceit 2 sports an undeniably solid foundation with some updates and time I can see Deceit 2 garnering a solid player base that will play for some time to come. As for now though, there’s just not enough to keep me and many others coming back when there are plenty of other games that scratch the same itch which are more polished and thought out.
There’s a battle pass that could keep you engaged, but you’ll need to shell out for 600 of the in-game currency if you want to acquire all rewards.
Final Thoughts
Despite the many imperfections, it was an undeniably entertaining experience, and for free to play, you can’t really go wrong. The game could have been done with a little more time in the oven. A more polished experience would have been extremely welcome.
The deception element, while present, lacked the depth and nuance of other games in the genre and therefore didn’t grip me in the envisioned way. I was engaged enough by the gameplay through high-intensity terror chases and the roles to at least give the game a recommendation. I award Deceit 2 the Silver Thumb Culture award.
For a full rundown on what the DLC for deceit 2 has to offer, check out my article linked here!
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
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