Glorious Empire

Glorious Empire is a 5 reel, 50 payline slot from NextGen Gaming. It is based on the Roman Empire and is all about the free games feature which benefits from sticky wilds. It also benefits from win both ways win both in base game as well as the free spins feature.

I first got to know this slot when I spend my days on the Gametech gaming group of casinos claiming the 400 and 500% bonuses. They used to have NextGen as a provider and I normally would kill wagering with this slot. I normally start with 1 euro bets up to maximum of 2.50 euro per spin.

I hit a couple of x500 and a couple of x300. This game is quick to trigger bonuses, however 7/10 free spins features pays next to nothing. Expect anything from x10 – 75x on average.

Temples and buildings as its backdrop, the soundtrack is quite epic and sounds like it should be part of a blockbuster film.

The wild is a lion symbol a shield and pays x5 your total bet for 5 of kind, sound low right? Wait till you land lots of wild during free spins and you have wild winds on 20 – 30 pay lines, then its easily x150 to x200 per spin. Now it pays both ways as well, so in essence wild line give you x10 your total stake.
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Glorious Empire is all about the free games feature which is triggered when you get 3 or more scatters anywhere on the reels. 3 scatters give you 7 free spins whilst 4 gives you 10 free spins. If you manage to get 5, you will receive 15 free spins. Whenever a wild symbol lands on the reels it stays sticky for the remainder of the free spins. You can re-trigger free spins, not sure up to how many though. I once managed to get 10 spins and re-triggered another 10, and won close to x1000 my total stake, as I had 14 wilds on the reels.

I simply love this slot and recommend you give it a try.

Ah! Glorious Empire, the Roman Empire. I love anything about the Roman Empire. The heroes, the movies, the gladiators, and the marvellous structures of the Roman Empire. Yes, that was a very distinctive era indeed. Games based on the Roman Empire has always been to my liking so far, although I have yet to win big on any of them. With Playtech's Gladiators game, for example, I missed getting the huge 1 million jackpot prize by 1 Golden Helmet icon - got only 8 of them instead of 9. That would have been a win of my lifetime! Hehehe.

I came across this Glorious Empire game from NextGen whilst browsing for new games to try out. The intro screen looked nice and interesting, so that caught my interest straight away, and before I knew it, I was already playing the game in the fun mode, as I always do first. After a few hours of playing it, I was getting a little bored with its small mediocre payouts, but those Sticky Wilds kept my interest going. Just as I was about to give up, a huge win came, with 11 Wilds on the reels, and that made all my sleepiness and boredom vanished into thin air! Pity it was only in the fun mode. Hahaha.

Glorious Empire plays with 40 paylines, but the minimum starting bet is $0.50. The game has very nice contemporary graphics, accompanied by a nice catchy background tune, and that should keep the game going. All wins are also paid both ways! I have never come across any 40-paylines game that pays both ways, so this is the first of its kind that I know of, for me at least. The Lion Insignia is the Wild symbol, paying an extremely low 250x the line bet for getting 5 of them, or 6.25x the total bet amount. It substitutes for other symbols except for the Scatter symbol, but doesn't do anything else, not even doubling any wins with it. However, during the free spins, the Wild symbols become sticky and remain on the reels for the duration of the free spins. This is when everything starts burning with excitement!

The Roman Building is the Scatter symbol, paying 80x the total bet for getting 5 of them, slightly less than the usual 100x. Getting 3, 4 or 5 of these Scatters trigger 7, 10, or 15 free spins without any multiplier, but the Free Spins game can be retriggered. Hmm, how I wish all the wins could be doubled, but the game does pay both ways, so that balances everything back. As for the other symbols, The Lady pays 200x, the Roman Warrior pays 150x, the Pegasus pays 125x, the Chariot pays 100x, the Helm pays 100x too, and all the rest pay 50x, all per line bet for getting 5 of each kind. An extremely low paytable, sad to say, but those sticky Wilds during the free spins could certainly make a big difference in the payouts.

What can I say about a game that can pay big, but needs an equally big minimum starting bet? $0.50 bet per spin is a little bit high for low rollers and small time players, even for me, so this could be a deterrent to some. For Dead Or Alive lovers, the game I mean, this Glorious Empire game may be next in line to be a big hit, if it can produce what it promises. I hate games that promise huge wins with 5 Wild Reels, yet I could never get them, not even 4 of those Wild Reels. The game Dead Or Alive was indeed an exceptional game, until it got 'upgraded' and became dead! So I'm hoping for the best from this glorious game, even though I haven't yet manage to get any good wins with my deposits so far, but I'll keep on trying. One of these days, I might just get very lucky! Hehehe.

This is a nice looking game, although the roman empire theme has possibly been done to death by online slots developers by now.

I think the presentation of NextGen slots has improved quite a lot recently, but I'm unsure if the same can be said about their payouts. This slot was suggested to me by a friend who knows of my love for NetEnt's Dead or Alive, but despite a sticky wild based bonus round it really isn't in the same league.

Hitting three scatters awards just seven free spins, which really isn't enough to amass a decent number of wilds on screen for a chance of a big win. The problem is exacerbated by the larger than normal reel area, which has an extra row compared to NetEnt's game. Thankfully, hitting four or five scatters does award ten or fifteen spins respectively, but those combinations are very rare like in most other games.

The payout for hitting those super rare five scatter combinations is a paltry 80x your stake too, a mere fraction of the 2,500x awarded by Dead or Alive for the same hit. The wild symbols don't pay out that great either, so hitting a wild line isn't even all that exciting. Just 5x your total stake for a full line of wilds is pathetic in my view, and that means even a full screen wouldn't give you an earth shattering win.

I did enjoy playing this game, and I guess I had high expectations because of the sticky wilds feature which were always going to be tough to match. The truth is Glorious Empire just isn't designed to be a super high variance monster like Dead or Alive is. If NetEnt's game didn't exist I think I would have really rated this slot, but as things stand I just can't get used to the drastically lower payouts awarded by this machine.

“Glorious Empire” is a Roman-themed slot launched by “NextGen” in September 2016, aimed to captivate all fans of ancient civilizations, but especially, it is a game designed for lovers of high variance slots.

Precisely the high volatility of this game is the result mainly of the combination of 5 factors: a structure of 5 x 4 reels, 40 pay lines, a tight paytable, lines paid in both directions from left to right and from right to left, and finally, a round of free spins endowed with a powerful feature that retains all wild symbols in place until the end of the free spins round.

Weaknesses of this slot are the prices per line set on its paytable and on the other hand, the fact that the player has to pay a bet of 50 credits for a spin with only 40 lines, but I should also add here the difficulty in triggering a single free spin round.

Personally, today during my first interaction with this game, from my first spin, my balance was never positive, in fact, my losing trend accelerated every time I increased my bet, however, after each of the two times I was able to trigger a round of free spins, both times I ended up with a balance very close to my initial point, so that it is possible that the actual RTP of this slot resembles the theoretical RTP of 96.929% described in the rules section of the game.

My total winnings in each of my two free spin rounds were 104x and 23x my total bet respectively, both were rounds of only 7 spins since scatters are not plentiful in this game.

I left the game with few losses, but certainly I did not want to continue after recovering almost completely my losses just it finished my second round of free games, I think at that point it was not so pleasant to sit and wait for a new possible round of free spins, not after all I had to wait for the first one.

In a 5 x 4 reels slot that pays lines formed in both directions like this, it is perfectly normal to get hits in most spins, however, the vast majority of payouts are only cents, so a delay in arrival of a round of free spins can perfectly translate into the depletion of your balance since personally I do not think it is feasible to obtain some gain counting only with the income generated during the base game.

There are players who really appreciate the highest variance slots, but simply this is not my kind of video slot.