With their mild demeanour and cute looks, it's easy to forget Pandas are part of the wider bear family. Well, black and white giant pandas are; the red ones apparently have more in common with racoons. It's the giant version we focus on in Pragmatic Play's follow up slot Panda's Fortune 2. You know the type, they're the ones covered in handfuls of soft fur, which look like someone's gone overboard with the mascara. These gentle giants are a symbol of peace and friendship in China, so it makes sense they would be put to use in an Asian themed slot.
Obviously, this isn't the first time the bamboo gobblers have appeared on the reels. Panda's Fortune 2 is the sequel to a slot released back in 2017, and the two games share more similarities than differences. For starters, both employ a 5-reel game grid with 3 rows and 25 fixed paylines to land winning combinations across. Visually, part two has a higher definition look to its symbols, and the game has moved from bamboo forests to one more commonly found in slots. That is, on the side of a mountain, all dreamy peaks, forests, and pagodas, layered over by a traditional Chinese soundtrack. If you've played one of these sorts of games before, you'll no doubt know the drill.
Panda's Fortune 2 is playable on any device from smartphone to desktop, offering a range of bets as low as 25 p/c and as high as $/€125. Along with most aspects of the game, the default RTP is bigger than before, coming in at the generous value of 96.51%. Volatility is high, too, rated 5 out of 5, so don't expect a blizzard of wins, though when golden frames start to stick during free spins, the action can get pretty interesting.
Three to five matching symbols on a payline from the first reel constitute a winner and trigger a payout. On the lower side of the paytable are calligraphically styled 9-A card royals, while high pays are bonsai trees, fish, frogs, lions, and interestingly, butterflies. All have a rich Asian appearance and look quite nice. Values aren't huge, where a five of a kind premium hit is worth a payout of 4 to 8 times the stake. Our panda pal is used as the wild symbol, appearing on reels 2, 3, 4, or 5. Panda wilds substitute for all symbols except the scatter.
In the base game and during free spins, all pay symbols except the bonus have a special golden version that can land on any reel. They have the same value as regular symbols and form combinations as normal. Where they differ is when a golden symbol is used in a winning combination, an extra prize may be awarded.
For any golden symbol in a five of a kind win, a random prize worth 5x to 4,998x the bet is awarded. For each golden wild in a 3 or 4 of a kind win, a 3x the bet prize is won. Or, each golden high-value symbol in a 3 or 4 symbol combo awards 2x the bet, while each golden low-value tile in 3 or 4 symbol combo awards a 1x the bet prize. All prizes are awarded in addition to the total win of the spin.
Keep an eye out for the scatter yin yang symbol as 3, 4, or 5 on the reels award 12 free spin plus a payout of 2x, 15x, or 100x the total bet. During free spins, every time a golden symbol hits, the spot it landed on is highlighted in gold and stays that way until the end. From then on, only golden symbols land in marked positions. Hitting three or more bonus symbols during the round awards +8 extra free spins.
Panda's Fortune 2 is one of those sequels that players wouldn't have missed out too much if Pragmatic Play hadn't decided to do a follow-up. The exception, of course, is Panda's Fortune fanatics (if there are any), then the bigger prizes and extra ways to win them will be A-okay. As far as these Asian-centric games go, Panda's Fortune 2 is alright. It's got the green, gold, and red trim; the location is comfortingly familiar, as are the creatures on the reels. Pandas aren't hugely common, so there is a certain level of individuality if we are being generous.
To its credit, Panda's Fortune 2 also has greater winning potential than before, and the upper echelon of prizes available from golden symbol combinations aren't bad. If you are going to spend any amount of time playing Panda's Fortune 2, it is worth memorising how the golden symbols affect the various winning combinations. If not, it can feel like the game misses a few prizes if you aren't fully clued up. However, when odd larger wins slip in out of the blue, they cause the occasional happy surprise.
The top prize is a little oddly valued. Presumably, Pragmatic Play cut the figure from 5,000x to 4,998x to squeeze a numeral '8' in there, which, as most players probably know, is an auspicious number in Chinese culture. From a purely materialistic standpoint, the sequel is a more appealing game to play, as its max win figure of 5,000x surpasses what was available in the first Panda's Fortune game.
Like many, if not all of these sorts of games from Pragmatic Play, Panda's Fortune 2 is a custom-built slot for a custom made audience. As with any precision engineered game, if you're not in its crosshairs, it'll be nigh on impossible to get enthusiastic about what it does. In short, if you have a soft spot for cute lumbering bears or are sifting around for an updated Asian themed slot, then Panda's Fortune 2 gets the job done. If not, it's more of the same from the Asian slots menu.
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