Dead or Alive 2 slot review: three free spins rounds and a 100,000x ceiling

Dead or Alive 2 is NetEnt's 2019 sequel to its 2009 Wild West slot: five reels, nine paylines, sticky wilds, and a choice of three free spins rounds that range from steady to extreme. The RTP is 96.8%, NetEnt puts the maximum win at 100,000 times the bet, and the volatility is high. Most of the game's value sits in the free spins, and most of that in one of the three rounds.

How Dead or Alive 2 plays

Five reels, three rows and nine fixed paylines paying left to right from three matching symbols. NetEnt's stake range is €0.09 to €9 a spin; casinos set their own within it. Five outlaw wilds, one per reel, stand in for every paying symbol, and the crossed guns scatter pays on its own: 2, 4, 25 or 2,500 times the bet for two, three, four or five scatters anywhere on the screen.

What a session costs: 100 spins at €0.09 and 96.8% RTP cost about €0.29 on average, and 100 spins at €1 about €3.20. The base game returns about 68% of stakes by itself; the rest comes from free spins that trigger on average about once in 200 spins.

Features

Scatter pays

Two scatters pay 2× the bet, three pay 4×, four 25× and five 2,500×. Three or more also start the free spins, so the trigger itself is never a dead spin.

Free spins: three rounds to choose from

Three or more scatters give 12 free spins and a choice:

• Train Heist, the calmest. Every wild that lands adds one step to a multiplier bar and one extra spin. When the bar reaches 16× you get five more spins and all wins pay 16 times. NetEnt's 100,000× figure refers to this round.
• Old Saloon, the middle option. All wins pay double and every wild sticks in place for the rest of the round. Two sticky wilds award five extra spins.
• High Noon Saloon, the extreme one. Wilds stick, and two wilds on the same reel become a 2× multiplier wild, three a 3× wild; multipliers on the line multiply each other. A sticky wild on each of the five reels awards five extra spins. Single spins here can pay tens of thousands of times the bet, and most rounds pay little.

Buy feature

Where the casino allows it (not in the UK), NetEnt offers a buy-in to the free spins at a price shown in the game. It skips the wait for three scatters; the RTP and the odds inside the round are the same.

RTP and volatility

NetEnt lists one RTP, 96.8%, and the buy feature keeps it. Casinos can still run a lower version of many NetEnt games, so check the information screen where you play.

The volatility is high, and High Noon Saloon is the reason: the sticky multiplier wilds make the top of the paytable reachable and the typical round poor. NetEnt's game page gives the maximum as 100,000 times the bet; reviews that quote 111,111× use the paytable's theoretical cap. Either way, it is a figure most players will never see. Train Heist gives the same RTP with far smaller swings. How slots pay explains how to use these numbers.

Who it suits

Dead or Alive 2 suits players who want to choose their own volatility: Train Heist for a round that nearly always pays something, High Noon for a small chance at a very large win. It does not suit a short session on a small budget; the base game is thin and the free spins are rare. The low maximum stake, €9 in NetEnt's version, also keeps high rollers away. It is a NetEnt game; NetEnt has belonged to Evolution since 2020.

Dead or Alive 2: FAQ

Sources

• NetEnt, Dead or Alive 2 game page: RTP 96.80%, 5 × 3 reels, 9 paylines, stake €0.09–€9.00, release 23 April 2019, scatter payouts, the three free spins rounds, "up to 100,000x".
• Evolution, Dead or Alive 2: high volatility, feature rules.

Checked 30 October 2026.