You might have noticed there's a bit of an over-representation of Oriental slots in the Pragmatic portfolio, something that can be explained by the company's strong ties to Asia. Generally speaking, we've never been that much into Asian-themed slots, so our initial attitude when we set out to try 5 Lions Gold was indifference. It's not just Asian-themed slots for that matter, we could say the same about Norse-themed slots, which means it's probably just us being primitive brutes with no culture. But hey, each to his own. Anyway, the point we were going to make is that, for some reason, Pragmatic Play only makes things worse as we've found their contributions to the category to be particularly generic. Ouch.
5 Lions Gold is not an entirely new offering. The original, simply entitled 5 Lions, was released in 2018 and is nearly identical to the remake, at least on the surface. They're both 243 win ways slots with a setup of 5 reels and 3 rows. The main difference between the two is the addition of a jackpot feature in 5 Lions Gold, but you'll also notice differences between the paytables as well as in the theoretical return to player. In the remake, the RTP stretches from 95.64% to 96.52% due to it being a jackpot game. You can play 5 Lions Gold across all compatible devices from between 18 cents to 90 Euros per spin.
As we've already mentioned, it's rather generic looking. There's nothing in the visual presentation that sticks out and no effort has been made to add any sort of twist to the narrative. You get a static backdrop of Oriental style waves and clouds and the background music, well, you can probably sort of imagine it in your head. On the reels you'll see lower value 9 to A royals as well as more lucrative turtles, koi fish, toads, Fenghuang birds and dragons. The latter is the most rewarding and yields 7 times your stake for 5 on a payline. The golden fu lion is the wild and substitutes for all symbol bar the scatter.
5 Lions Gold has 3 jackpots available, each with a fixed value:
These jackpots can pop in two different ways. The first one is the Golden Reels Jackpot. At every spin, in both the main game and the free spins feature, random reels turn to gold, up to a maximum of 5 reels. 3, 4 or 5 golden reels triggers the minor, major or grand jackpot respectively.
The other way is through the Caishen Random Award. Randomly triggered and available in both the main game and the free spins round, it can reward you either the free spins feature or the jackpot bonus game. In the bonus game you get to pick golden coins which then reveals jackpot symbols. Match 3 of the same symbol to be awarded the corresponding jackpot.
If you want to have a shot at the 7000x win potential, however, you will have to trigger the Free Spins feature by landing the scatter symbol simultaneously on reels 2, 3 and 4. Once in, you now get to choose from 7 options, each with a unique combination of free spins and multipliers. The least volatile option will give you 24 free spins with multipliers of 2x, 3x or 5x while the most volatile option gives you 6 free spins and multipliers of 15x, 30x or 40x. There's also a mystery choice where you get a random number of free spins and multipliers. If lucky, you could end up with 24 free spins and multipliers of up to 40x. Once the free spins round starts, a multiplier value is randomly selected on each spin.
5 Lions Gold doesn't exactly feature the most awe-inspiring artwork and the theme is represented by rather dated graphics, and – most damningly – a lack of meaningful content (or narrative if you will). With that said, visual design is only of secondary importance - it's the mathematical design that makes or breaks a slot, and luckily for 5 Lions Gold, the actual gambling aspect is a whole lot more interesting than the graphics.
Even so, 5 Lions Gold is far from Pragmatic's best effort and unless you don't mind the lower RTP typically associated with jackpot slots, there are far better options in the Pragmatic lineup that offer equal or even better potential. It's not totally useless, however, and the 7000x potential is enough to catch our attention, but there’s a long way to go to make 5 Lions Gold a 'contender in an industry that’s become crowded with high-quality games.
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