Sword of Ares slot is Pragmatic Play’s new addition that runs on 6 reels and up to 20 pay lines. The name is pretty much revealing of the theme, and yes, you will be taken back to the times of Ancient Greece when gods ruled the Earth. God of War is gathering his troops and if you think you have what he needs, you can strap on some sandals, grab your blade and join Ares’ training camp at any Pragmatic Play Casino for real, or here for fun.
How to Play Sword of Ares Slot?
Ares is familiar for his bloodlust, so do not forget to set your bets.
- Hit +/- buttons will pop out a panel to help you manipulate your bets by increasing or decreasing either the total bet the coin value and the bet separately.
- Spin button will get the reels moving.
- Autoplay opens up a panel that lets you choose the number of automated spins and whether and when you want them to end.
- Buy Free Spins will let you buy your way into the feature.
Slot Features
The Tumble mechanic is something we’re all familiar with when it comes to Pragmatic Play’s slot games. Winning combos are created, involved symbols disappear, remaining symbols drop to the bottom of the grid and new symbols fall to fill the empty places. Tumbling sequences can be stringed together and they stop when no more consecutive wins are formed.
Multiplier Collection
Above the grid, there is a multiplier meter that contains 3 locked multiplier values in the base game and 6 in the Free Spins feature. There are thresholds set and once those are reached, the multipliers will unlock. During the feature, at every spin, the number of winning symbols and any exploded symbols will get collected to help you reach those thresholds. At the end of the tumbles, the total tumble win is multiplied by the highest multiplier unlocked.
After 20 symbols exploded you get 1st level multiplier that is randomly chosen between x2, x3 or x4. On 50 symbols collected you unlock the 2nd level which is a randomly chosen multiplier between x5, x6, x7 or x8. After the 100 collected symbol, the 3rd level unlocks and a multiplier between x9, x10, x11, x12, x13, x14 or x15 is randomly awarded.
There are 4 different Bomb symbols that are present on the reels that can hit randomly during spins and tumbles in both the free spins and the main game. Each time it hits they remain on the screen until there are no more winning combos at which point they explode and remove all symbols in an X pattern. However, in the base game, the Bomb will not go off until at least one tumble occurred.
Free Spins
Ares is your Scatter symbol that can hit on all reels and it cannot be exploded in Bomb sequences. When you hit 4 or more Scatters anywhere on the reels, you will trigger the Free Spins feature that will award 15 spins and it cannot be retriggered. The feature comes with 6 progressive multiplier levels.
Level 1 unlocks after 15 symbols exploded and awards x2, x3 or x4 multiplier. Level 2 unlocks after 30 symbols exploded and awards x5, x6, x7 or x8 multiplier. Level 3 needs 45 symbols to unlock a multiplier that ranges between x9 and x15. Level 4 needs 60 symbols exploded to unlock a multiplier ranging between x16 and x32. When you get 100 symbols exploded you get into Level 5 which unlocks a random multiplier between x35 and x100. If you get lucky and manage to explode 225 symbols you will get into Level 6 and unlock a random multiplier that can be x150, x200, x300 or x500.
Summary
Sword of Ares can be viewed as a sequel or rather a follow-up to the Gate of Olympus slot, and looking at both of these slots comparatively it’s hard to tell which one is better, as both seem to be delivering just as equal quality gaming with a slightly different approach than the other. Win cap is as powerful as the god of war and it is sitting at x10000 the bet with a varying RTP that goes up to 96.40% and high volatility levels.
Sword of Ares is a quite new game from Pragmatic Play. Lately I've been quite enjoying Pragmatic Play games so when I saw that this game was launched, I was eager to try it out.
The game itself is inspired by the warrior theme, but I have to say that the game design looks really nice and the color scheme is vibrant and enjoyable. As for the mechanics, the game follows the footsteps of Gates of Olympus slot, where you get paid for winning clusters of 8 matching symbols or more. However, there's one big twist- the multipliers. In order to achieve winning multipliers added to your win, you need to get as many winning clusters as possible. On each spin there's a meter on top of the reels, which sums up the winning symbols you've got. And there are many different meters to complete for the big multipliers. And let me tell you- it's quite hard to achieve big multipliers. To get to the first multiplier, which can be up to 5x in the base game, you need to collect 20 symbols. Then for the next- 50. Only a few times I've gotten to the level 2 multiplier but it hasn't resulted in any major wins. One thing that's good is that there are different bomb symbols which can remove symbols horizontally, vertically or both ways. That has helped me a few times to get to the next stage of multipliers, but again, no big wins have resulted from this feature.
Aside from that, there's also a free spins bonus round which is triggered by 4 or more scatters. There you get to play the same spins as in the base game, but the multipliers are increased in the free spins and to get to the first two levels of multipliers, you need to collect a bit less winning symbols. Having said that, the first few times I tried this game I was quite disappointed. The game is very volatile so you can easily end up with 20x from the free spins. Also compared to Gates of Olympus, there you have the possibility to land a big multiplier, while here to get to any of the big multipliers, you need to collect lots of winning symbols. In my experience thus far, I haven't had any wins above 150x bet mark and the big multipliers seem hard to achieve.
Overall it's a nice looking game and I do like in theory the collection mechanic, but I wish you could land some additional multipliers aside from just collecting them. And so far the game feels a bit too volatile for my liking.