LIKED
Oh boy! I can still remember the first time I tried playing Book Of Ra Deluxe several years ago. I've heard so much about the game, about how it could pay huge, about how some players had won big on the game, and that led me to find this Novomatic game and tried it out for myself. Did I win anything? Heck no! The first time at anything is hardly ever successful, at playing games I mean, but I enjoyed those expanding symbols and the few retriggers that I got. I did make a decent win later on, after several plays on the game, and Book Of Ra Deluxe has remained one of my favourite games to this day.
Book Of Ra Deluxe 6 is a sequel of the original game. The game is basically the same, playing and paying the same way, but with a slight difference. It now plays with 6 reels instead of 5, but this is actually an option, and players can still play the game with just 5 reels. But what's the point in that, right? Might as well play the original 5-reels game, why bother with this 6-reeler if you're not going to play it? Well, maybe there is a valid reason. The 5-reeler game has a minimum starting bet of 0.20 EUR per spin, with selectable paylines if you want to play with smaller bets. The 6-reeler game starts at 0.40 EUR, double the bet amount per spin, but the lines are still selectable. I like this option. It's becoming a rarity nowadays, with newer games opting for fixed paylines instead.
Paytable wise, everything remains identical to the original game, but with the addition of 6th reel wins. The Book remains both the Wild and the Scatter symbol, paying 200x the total bet for getting 6 of them, and getting 3 or more of them triggers 10 free spins with Expanding symbols. More Free Spins games can be retriggered, and this is good. I like it. However, the free spins do not have any multiplier, and the Wild symbol doesn't double any wins either, but these aren't a barrier to getting nice big wins. The Explorer pays 750x, the Pharaoh pays 250x, the Bird Idol pays 100x, the Scarab pays 100x too, and the rest pay from 37.5x to 25x, all per total bet amount for getting 6 of each kind. Yes, a total bet amount for any 6-of-a-kind win, so getting 6 full Expanded Reels of the Explorer, the maximum possible win per spin, would pay a huge 7500x the total bet amount! Not many games can pay this big, I can tell you that. The paytable is a very good one of course, but short of being an excellent one.
DISLIKED
Well, it isn't actually something that I can say is not good, but that's how all very high variance games play, and that is the difficulty in getting the Free Spins game and the difficulty in getting good payouts in the base game. Those good wins are indeed very hard to come by, but they do come eventually, for a win to be remembered. My only session on this 6-reels version couldn't even get me a Free Spins game, much less getting any nice wins in the base game, but I'm not fooled by all that. I know what the game can do, but it just wasn't time for me to see it or to get it. Maybe on another day, maybe not, I cannot say for sure, but it'll remain as one of my favourite games.
