Dragon Hero (Pragmatic Play) Slot Review
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Dragon Hero: Slot Overview
The slot machine selection from Pragmatic Play offers all sorts of different themes. They already have lots of entries for Asian-themed slots: powerful dragons, lucky pandas, the chinese lucky number 8, or the wealth-bringing three-legged golden toad, “Jin Chan.” It doesn`t really matter what kind of symbol you’re looking for; chances are high that one of Pragmatic Play`s slots will include it.
Dragon Hero is Pragmatic`s next entry that is all about Chinese dragons. The machine, releasing on January 5th 2023, will be Pragmatic Play`s first release of 2023. Funnily enough, the 22nd of January might have been a better release date since that’s when China actually celebrates the new year since they go by the lunisolar calendar, which waits for the new moon to arrive.
Dragon Hero: Stats and Special Symbols
The slot machine has a 5-reel, 4-row layout and is played on 20 fixed paylines. There is a freespins feature that can be triggered by landing three or more scatters. Landing 3, 4, or 5 scatters will result in 6, 8, or 10 bonus freespins, respectively. Those bonus freespins reels will determine how many freespins you actually trigger for the bonus. Each reel will spin a number of 1, 2, or 3, meaning that you could trigger the bonus with a total of 30 freespins if you land 5 scatters and a 3 on every bonus freespin reel.
The game features royals of 10 to A as the low symbols aswell as different symbols of Chinese culture up to a golden fortune cookie as the best regular symbol, topping on 40 times the bet size for a full five of a kind line. There are two different wild symbols: super wild and regular wild. The super wild is a golden dragon head that can only land on the reels 2, 3, and 4 and has three slots on it for yin-yang symbols, which brings us to the regular wild. The regular wild can`t land naturally and can only be spread by the super wild symbol. Depending on the amount of filled-up yin-yang slots on the super wild, it will spread between 1 and 3 regular wild symbols on any position of the reels. For some reason, Pragmatic decided to give the super wild symbols the ability to overlap the randomly placed wild symbols, so while you might get 7 wild symbols randomly placed, in the worst case you end up with only 1 extra wild. If the player manages to land a full line of wild symbols, the player will be rewarded with a payout of 60 times the bet for the wildline. So a full screen of wilds will achieve 1.200 times the bet, hence the 60x on all 20 lines.
Don`t confound the super wild symbol with the scatter symbol, which is especially easy with the spinning speed of Pragmatic Play`s turbo spins.
Depending on your casino, Dragon Hero might have a lower RTP with a minimum of at least 94.03%.
Dragon Hero: Free Spins Bonus Feature
The free spins bonus gets triggered if the player lands at least three scatters in view. Depending on whether the bonus was triggered with 3, 4, or 5 scatters, the player will achieve up to 18, 24, or 30 freespins, respectively, from the bonus freespins reels. While in the freespins feature, super wild symbols become sticky and get locked on the positions they were landed on. Just as in the base game, they land with 1, 2, or 3 filled slots of yin-yang symbols, which also remain for the rest of the bonus round. Sadly, even if scatters land during the bonus, there is no way to retrigger some additional freespins. That being said, the scatter still has a purpose during the bonus; every landed scatter will randomly select a super wild symbol and fill up a half yin-yang, so the landed super wild symbols can get enhanced until all 3 yin-yang positions are filled.
If the player wants to, there is a bonus buy option available. For 100 times the bet size, the player can buy a spin that guarantees to land at least 3 scatter symbols. Buying the bonus will increase the RTP slightly from 96% to 96.13%.
Dragon Hero: Conclusion
Since there is no game that works like Dragon Hero already, it`s a welcomed addition to the slot selection we already have. However, the machine is nothing really special that will keep you hooked up for several sessions. The 5,000 times the bet maximum win cap is fair, and the 96% RTP this slot comes with in the best version, can also be considered decent. The fact that the randomly played wild symbols from the super wild symbols can overlap plays out as a big bummer during the bonus. You can`t expect Pragmatic Play to pump out a highlight slot after a highlight slot with quick releases of six to nine new machines per month. So everything that is not a reskin of something already available is always welcomed.
