Emperor of the Sea Slot

When I first came across this 'new' game from Microgaming, I was expecting a game to Huangdi The Yellow Emperor's good standards, but I was totally disappointed, and amazed as well. A new game that looks like it just came out from a lost games chest from yesteryears! The graphics are much to be desired, the overall presentation looks very old and dated, and could have been mistaken for a game from 10 years back. My first impression of this Emperor Of The Sea game was therefore way beyond my expectations, perhaps even at its lowest point.

The game plays with 88 paylines, with a minimum starting bet of $0.88 per spin. Gees! This reminds me of the old MG games that plays with big starting bets of $1.25 and above. Why is MG going retro in the wrong way now? I really wonder. Personally, I think that in the current economic conditions, this is one very bad move, which would definitely deter players from trying out this game. Even $0.50 bet per spin is already considered high. Anything above this would be a no-no, well, to me at least. But I finally decided to give this game a brief try, not willing to waste more money that I should.

The Logo is the Wild symbol in the game, paying a blardy low 5.9x the total bet for getting 5 of them. It comes stacked on all reels in both the base and Free Spins game, and also substitutes for other symbols except the Scatter symbol. Nope, it doesn't double any wins with it. The Gold Ingot is the Scatter symbol, paying the usual 100x total bet for getting 5 of them, and getting 3 or more of these Scatters trigger 8 free spins with Rolling Reels and Growing Wilds, but with no multiplier. Argh! During the free spins, the Wild stacks grow by +1 Wild symbol per spin, up to 15 Wild symbols per stack. As for the other symbols, the Dragon pays 5.6x, the Pot pays 3.9x, the Turtle pays 3.6x, the Fish pays 2.5x, the Ship pays 2.2x, and the rest pay from 1.7x to 1x, all per total bet for getting 5 of each kind. The paytable? An extremely blardy low one, which is even worse for a game with only 88 paylines!

Can the Free Spins game be retriggered? Beats me, but nothing is indicated in the paytable. Most probably it can be retriggered, otherwise, this game would be really insane without it! What about getting 2 Scatters? Getting 2 of them gets you nothing! Another downside to this game. All in all, the winning chances in the base game is very low and very poor! Makes me really wonder if anyone would ever like playing this Emperor Of The Sea game. For me personally, even a very brief play was more than enough to deter me for life!

Well, nothing in the game is good actually. Getting 5 Wild Reels only pay a lousy 525x total bet amount! That's the maximum win possible in the game, so imagine the sort of average payouts it would pay! Proof? My one and only play on Emperor Of The Sea - first 10 spins, absolutely nothing, without any single payout, on the next spin, it paid a small 3-of-a-kind win, still below my bet amount, then the next 11 spins, more of complete nothingness! I gave the game a one-finger salute and quit playing it! It got me totally disgusted and disappointed!

“Emperor of the Sea” is another Asian themed slot that is part of the video slot’s collection of “Microgaming” since March 2016. The game looks totally basic; even at first glance, I came to think that it was one of the old video slots manufactured by “Aristocrat,” even so, today I decided to try it because, based on previous experiences, I am convinced that we must never judge a slot solely by its appearance.

This slot has a layout of 5 x 4 reels, and most likely, in an attempt to join one of the most entrenched Chinese superstitions, Microgaming has provided this video slot with a total of 88 pay lines, which I'm not sure it has been very good idea, since a couple of streaks of non-winning spins has full capacity to quickly raze the player's coins since for each spin you have to pay 88 credits, and based on what I could experience today playing “Emperor of the Sea” slot, dead spins runs are not isolated events.

Now, if the player is not willing to pay 88 credits in each spin, then he also has the option to choose 38 or 68 lines to decrease the value of his bet.

On the other hand, one of the advantages of this game is that wild symbols appear stacked, thus making it possible to obtain real big wins on the part of the player, and precisely, I remember a big win close to 36x my total bet during a single spin that helped me to recover part of my losses coming from my first big slump, this thanks to the fact that by that time I had already raised my bet on a couple of occasions.

My final recovery came at the time when I finally got the scatters needed to trigger my first round of free spins; thanks to this feature I got a total gain of about 80 times my total bet, and paradoxically, of these 80x, 75x weren’t won during the 8 free spins but at the moment of triggering the feature since I was so lucky and they appeared not only 3 but 4 scatters; if only 3 scatters had appeared, this round would have been a disaster and no doubt today I would have left the game with a defeated face.

Few turns after my first round of free spins it came my second round, this time triggered only with 3 scatters and they left me a total win of 12x my bet per spin, after which I made the decision to terminate my session to not ending up returning my small profits to the machine.

In general, I think “Emperor of the Sea” is a simple but also interesting slot; however, the course of my session left me with the impression that it will not be easy to repeat this feat again since the performance of this slot during the base game did not seem really good to me, and in fact, the only two significant events that allowed me ending with a positive balance were a spin with a payout of 36x my total bet that was later complemented by the payout of 75x coming from getting 4 scatters when triggering my first free spins, without which, my defeat would have been imminent.

I simply say that this is a slot with which you have to be a little careful; in any case, if you are a fan of high variance slots, then perhaps “Emperor of the Sea” is a suitable slot for you.