5 Lions Gold Slot Review

5 Lions Gold is a video slot from Pragmatic Play with 5 reels and 243 ways to win. Released in June 2019, you can play this game at online casinos such as Unibet, Casumo or Mr Green.

Theme and basic information

5 Lions Gold is the successor of last year’s 5 Lions. Thus, we get an Asian themed slot from Pragmatic Play that offers some pretty details in the animal symbols but is overall fairly generic. The background is blue with typical Asian waves and clouds, the gold frame is also nothing new and the vaguely Asian-looking card symbols are par for the course with such themes.

Pragmatic Play doesn’t offer anything new here and nothing particularly breath-taking either. The colours are bright, the background sound is about as imaginative as you might imagine with this theme.

On the reels you’ll find the dragon, the Fenghuang bird (or phoenix), a toad, a koi fish, and a turtle. The dragon is the most valuable of all symbols, paying out 7x our stake for a win of 5 of it. The bird pays out 4.5x our stake for such a win and the toad as well. Koi and turtle each pay 3.5x our stake for 5 on a payline.

The remaining symbols are the already mentioned card symbols from 9 to A.

You can play this game from 0.18 to 90.00.

Caishen rewards randomly

In the base game, you’ll notice two things. Caishen showing up randomly to give us a reward either in the form of triggering the free spins or by launching the jackpot game.

And you’ll notice that some symbols have a golden background as they spin along the reels. Most of the time, this won’t affect your gameplay at all. But if you get 3 reels with golden background symbols, you’ll actually receive the minor jackpot. Four reels of golden background would result in the major jackpot just being paid out and five reels with the golden background would trigger the grand jackpot.

Free spin options and three static jackpots

You either trigger the free spins thanks to Caishen, who simply awards them as he shows up in the base game. Or you spin three Yin Yang symbols onto the three middle reels.

Then you get to choose how many spins you want to play and what the potential multipliers on each win should be.

These are your options:

• 24 spins with a 2x, 3x or 5x multiplier
• 18 spins with a 3x, 5x or 8x multiplier
• 15 spins with a 5x, 8x or 10x multiplier
• 12 spins with an 8x, 10x or 15x multiplier
• 9 spins with a 10x, 15x or 30x multiplier
• 6 spins with a 15x, 30x or 40x multiplier

There’s also a mystery option which can give you anything from 6 spins with a maximum 5x multiplier to 24 spins with a maximum 40x multiplier. More often than not, however, it will be somewhere along the lines of what you could have chosen anyway.

Apart from triggering the three jackpots thanks to the golden background symbols in the base game, Caishen could also just trigger the jackpot game.

Now you’re looking at a screen of 15 symbols, which you get to click through to reveal the symbols representing each jackpot. Once you’ve revealed three of the same kind, that jackpot will be paid out to you. Most of the time that will be the minor jackpot, of course.

Jackpots are worth the following:

• Minor jackpot = 15 times your total stake
• Major jackpot = 250 times your total stake
• Grand jackpot = 2,000 times your total stake

Conclusion: A generic Asian-themed slots with big win potential

The theoretical RTP (Return to Player) of 5 Lions Gold is 96.52%, which is indeed better than the for the original 5 Lions slot. However, this game is also very volatile. Big wins of up to 7,000x your stake are absolutely possible, but take care with your budget.

During our first free spin game we chose the 15 spins with a multiplier of at least 5x. We managed to win over 160x our stake and that was pretty awesome. During a more daring approach of choosing 9 spins and a minimum multiplier of at least 10x, we walked away with 13x our stake.

So, the potential is there and that is part of the appeal and fun playing this game. We regularly won the minor jackpot as well, which helped in keeping us going. Sure, the theme isn’t very original and the execution somewhat generic, but we still had fun with this slot and the mechanics worked for us.