Original Release: Pragmatic Play, 2017
“The beast Lu Bu must reach Diamond tier status today!”
3 Kingdoms: Battle of Red Cliffs (Pragmatic Play, 2017)
Review by: C. M0use
The battles of Wu, Wei and Shu have now played out across many video games … and the rumble continues in an online casino near you with Pragmatic Play’s 3 Kingdoms.
This will obviously catch the eye of any Dynasty Warriors fans out there (and any Romance of Three Kingdoms fans … anyone?), but it doesn’t have much to offer if your main interest is in those franchises or in the historical aspect. Instead it’s pretty much just another of the many generically Asian-themed slots out there.
It doesn’t have much in the way of special features for big slots fans either, though you can at least say it’s straightforward and easy to understand. The main feature is that you randomly get orbs with certain spins, along with a portion of your wager being stored away in a kitty at the top of the screen. After you collect 40 orbs, you get to cash out the kitty with a multiplier that ranges from 2x to 100x (randomly selected). Orb appearances are random, but I’d say it averages out to one every five or six spins.
There is also a free spin system that can pop up at any time if you hit three scatter symbols. You’re then prompted to pick 20, 10 or 5 free spins; the fewer the spins, the more of the famous generals become wild symbols in the playfield when they land. I actually hit this exactly three times while testing the game out and tried each option: picking 20 spins I got about 20x my wager amount back, 10x at 10 spins and 30x at 5 spins (all off of one big hit with a lot of wilds). Despite the results I think the 20 spins is probably the way to go, given that you can re-trigger if you land three more scatter symbols.
3 Kingdoms seems to be listed as “medium” volatility about the internet, I guess because the free spin returns tend to be at least decent, but expect to commonly have runs of 10 to 30something dead spins or pointlessly small fractional wins. I’ve seen RTPs of 96 to 96.5% listed, but clearly the free spins and bonus feature carries a lot of this.
The music tries to be period-appropriate, I guess, but it’s just not very good. The old school Chinese restaurant menu font may make you hungry for some pork fried rice with some General Tso’s and a big plastic stool sample jar of wonton soup, but nothing here is going to inspire you to take to the Yangtze and dethrone the Emperor.
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