5 Lions Gold slot review (Pragmatic Play)

It seems Pragmatic Play intends to dominate the Chinese lucky slots niche

They release one video slot after another with Koi carps, dragons, lions and jackpot features. And a lot, an awful lot of gold because that suits these kinds of slots completely.

And, as much as we like these kinds of slots, we think it’s too much.

5 Lions Gold is yet another Oriental theme slot, and that’s starting to be a bit boring. And they all look alike.

We are positive about the potential: you can win up to 7,000 x the total bet during the free spins. That’s huge.

The jackpot features can also be very lucrative: the first prize is the Grand Jackpot, worth 2,000 x the total bet.

The variance of 5 Lions Gold is therefore very high.

How does the 5 Lions Gold video slot work?

5 Lions Gold has 5 reels with 3 rows of symbols. The win all ways mechanism is active, which gives you 243 ways to win.

Betting starts at $€ 0.18 per turn, and that goes up to $€ 90.

About the payout rate of 5 Lions Gold, the game rules say the following: this is a minimum of 95.94% and a maximum of 96.5%. Unfortunately, it is not clear what is causing the difference.

Symbols and payouts

The most important symbol in the game is the lion. It is wild and replaces all symbols except for the scatters; it also takes care of the very high payouts during the free spins. The wilds now have a multiplier, which can be up to 40 x.

Wilds only occur on the middle three reels.

The premium symbols also include cranes, frogs, Koi Carps, dragons and turtles.

The dragon is worth more than anything: 7 x the total bet in case of a 5-of-a-kind. The other animals give you between 3.5 x and 4.5 x the bet in case of a 5-of-a-kind.

Five of the same card symbols are good for payouts up to 1 x or 2 x the total bet.

Win 3 Jackpots in two ways

5 Lions Gold offers you three big jackpots.

There are two ways to win them: by winning the mystery Jackpot Feature (a pick and click bonus) or by spinning golden reels.

The more golden reels, the higher the jackpot:

• The Grand: 2,000 x the bet (5 gold reels)
• The Major: 150 x the bet (4 gold reels)
• The Minor: 15 x the bet (3 gold reels)

Free spins bonus with multipliers up to 40 x

Three scattered Yin and Yang symbols activate the free spins bonus.

This is a “build your own bonus” free spins bonus: you can choose how many free spins you want to play and which mystery wild multipliers.

The number of spins lies between 6 and 25. This includes wild multipliers between 2 x, 3 x and 5 x (with 25 free spins) and 15 x, 30 x and 40 x (with 6 free spins).

Do you like to take some extra risk? Choose the mystery spins option: you then get a random number of free spins plus a mystery multiplier. This can be very lucrative, but also very disappointing.

Our verdict on the 5 Lions Gold video slot

5 Lions Gold is a great game in its genre.

The only problem is that we are a bit fed up with that type of game.

We also think that the fuzzy business with a varying payout rate isn’t cool. A slot has an average payout rate, and if you start working with bandwidths, the least a slot provider should do is explain how it works.

On the other hand, the bonus features are excellent and can bring you an enormous amount of money, both from free spins and jackpots.

3.5 stars out of 5

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