Lord Merlin and the Lady of the Lake Slot

Lord Merlin and the Lady of the Lake is a slot game from Play'n Go software provider that was released earlier this year. The game follows the footsteps of the Rise of Merlin slot, as the main character in this slot is Merlin again. I have to say if there's one thing I find a bit much is the name of the game itself- it's quite a lengthy name to pronounce. That being said, I first tried this game at one of Videoslots tournaments and ever since then, it's a slot I enjoy playing when lowrolling.

The slot itself is similar to your 10 payline slots- there's a wild symbol and 3 or more scatters trigger the bonus round. The slot scene is based at a lake and overall the design and graphics are very pleasing. The minimum bets are 10 cents which makes it a perfect slot for low rolling sessions. In the base game I haven't got many great hits, but I like the fact that you get lots of small wins to keep the balance going. 

As I mentioned before, there's a bonus round and I quite enjoy the way it works. You get 8 free spins and instead of having 1 special expanding symbol, on every spin you get a different expanding symbol. But the goal in the bonus round is to get 2 or more scatters-  because then you get 2 additional free spins with the special expanding symbol that was active when triggering the scatters. I think it gives a great variety and you can never get bored. Also, scatters are wild symbols too, so you can not only get additional spins but build good winning combinations. Besides, comparing this to other slots with a special symbol, if you don't get a premium symbol, you may feel like you don't have a chance for a big win. But in this game, you can get re-triggers and also have a good chance of having premium special symbols. 

Overall, I like this game, I think it has an interesting bonus round and there's definitely good winning potential. Also I think that it's fun how many re-triggers you can get and all you need are 2 scatters. I think it's a great game for lowrolling and I've had a few wins around 100x bet, so I would recommend trying this slot.

This game from PlaynGo has a rather long title for yet another clone of the popular ‘Book’ game. Beats me why not just naming it Book Of Merlin instead, that would be simple and short. Anyhow, I have actually lost a lot of interest in PlaynGo games as most of them have been performing atrociously since late last year – so many dead spins and terribly difficult to trigger the free spins feature games, and including the horribly low payouts they tend to pay of late. But, I gave this game a try, simply for trying out sake, but now know that it was a mistake!

This game has minor changes in it, playing quite differently from the usual ‘Book’ games, but has the same good winning potentials, if you can get them that is. The maximum possible single win is 10,000x instead of the standard 5000x, because both the Merlin and the Lady of the Lake Wild symbols pay twice as much. Getting 5 Excalibur Scatter symbols would pay 100x the bet amount, half of the usual, but all other symbols would pay the same.

What I don’t like about this game is that the feature game only gives 8 free spins instead of 10, and that 2 missing free spins can make a big difference in the payouts. Retriggering of 8 more free spins is also omitted, being replaced by getting 2 Excalibur free spins instead, whenever 2 scatters appear during a free spin. What’s the difference of that Excalibur free spins? Well, in the normal free spins, the Expanding Scattering symbol changes with each new free spin, by the spinning of the symbols, but in Excalibur free spins, the random symbol remains locked. Yeah right, like that would make a big difference in the payouts? I found it to be more distressing than interesting!

As I’ve said before, PlaynGo games have been paying out horribly low wins from their games, and it’s also the same in this game. From the several feature games that I managed to get, they paid from under 10x and up to 52x, very much to my disappointment, especially that changing scatter symbol with each new spin. A stupid idea if I may say so!

I couldn’t stand playing this Merlin game after about 1 or 2 hours of play, so I simply quit the game and would never come back to give it any more plays. I would have given a much lower rating, if not for the very good paytable, but the measly wins simply couldn’t justify it either.

Lord Merlin & the Lady of the Lake is a re-skin of the already existing slot Cat Wilde & the Lost Chapter, which has been exclusive to PokerStars for the last couple of months. Think Rise of Merlin/Legacy of Dead, but with two twists:

In the bonus you don't have one special expanding symbol, instead the special symbol changes randomly from spin to spin. You get 8 initial spins, and these can still get re-triggered like on other book games by landing the scatters. If you land at least two scatters, your current special symbol gets locked and you get extra spins, like on eg. Legacy of Egypt/Dawn of Egypt (damn, a lot of Play 'n GO slots include the words "Legacy", "Doom", "Rise" or "Egypt" these days...).

- The top symbol, Merlin himself, is 1000x for a full line, double the usual payout for this type of book game. That means 10.000x for a full screen of this guy, which sounds pretty awesome, right?

But, let this be said: It's a tough game, bonuses are a lot harder to trigger than on comparable book games, I feel. And they usually don't pay much, as the random special symbol likes to disappear "magically". Retriggers are not easy to get either, I think I had two of them all in all, but these bonuses didn't pay anything special, just missing even three of a kind Queens and Kings over and over again.

I'm not a big fan of this game, but at least is has re-introduced a feature I personally like a lot on Play 'n GO's slots: You can choose your number of lines (1-10), which I have missed on other recent slots like Doom of Dead or Shield of Athena.

The bonus is pretty hard to land on this one, and it doesn't really pay a lot most of the time. So maybe that possible 10.000x max. win comes at too high of a price, pretty similar to slots like Cat Wilde & the Shield of Athena. Too volatile for its own good?