Long Pao Slot Review
Red lacquered pillars climb either side of the screen, darkening into a ceiling of purple fretwork, and the reels sit inside a thick red frame against a wall that goes almost black at the corners. Long Pao stages its Chinese imperial court in bold comic-book outlines, all halftone shading and rich colour. Carved wooden lattice panels sit low on either side, like the room screens of a real palace hall.
NetEnt keeps the stage dressed and the machinery simple here. It’s a 5×3 grid with 25 fixed paylines, running at 96.96% RTP with a hit frequency of 25%, a 700x win ceiling and bets from 0.25 to 250 per spin. For the same steady rhythm, Butterfly Staxx and Twin Spin Megaways sit nearby, as does Starburst, which shares the held-reels idea.
Symbols and Pays
The court fills the reels: a red-robed king, a young man in green and gold, a woman in a gold headdress and another with green hair, backed by a sword and the royals. Wins pay left to right on consecutive reels, and only the highest win on each bet line counts. The wild is a dragon robe icon that substitutes for everything except the Free Spin symbol.
All 25 lines are active on every spin, and there’s no option to trim them back, so the cost per spin covers the full grid. Symbol pays below are multiples of the total bet:
- Red-robed King: 2x for three, 6x for four, 40x for five
- Young Man in green and gold: 2x, 4x, 12x
- Woman with Gold Headdress: 1x, 2x, 10x
- Woman with Green Hair: 0.6x, 2x, 8x
- Sword: 0.6x, 1.2x, 5x
- A: 0.4x, 1x, 4x
- K: 0.2x, 0.6x, 3x
- Q: 0.2x, 0.4x, 2x
- J: 0.2x, 0.4x, 1.6x
The top of the table is where the interest is. The drop from the king to the second tier is steep, so the big line wins come from a single symbol rather than a spread of them. Mid-table, the sword sits between the two worlds, paying enough at the top end to matter without ever carrying a session on its own.
The royals fill in the gaps, paying mostly fractions of the bet. Because only the highest win per line pays, overlapping combinations don’t stack: a line showing both a four-of-a-kind and a three-of-a-kind of the same symbol settles at the higher value and the lower one is discarded.
A line built from wilds still needs the same left-to-right succession as any other, and the dragon robe can’t stand in for a Free Spin symbol. That exclusion matters more than it sounds once Sticky Wins gets involved, since a wild can extend a held line but never complete a scatter set.
Sticky Wins
A winning bet line, or three or more Free Spin symbols anywhere, sets off the Sticky Wins feature. The reels carrying winning symbols lock in place and the rest re-spin, hunting for a bigger result.
The sequence runs in a strict order. First the trigger lands and the winning reels freeze. Then the free reels spin again, one at a time, and any new win adds its symbols to the held set. Each fresh win buys another re-spin of the remaining reels.
When a re-spin lands nothing extra, the feature ends and every active win pays out at once. It’s a simple loop, and it does the job of stringing small hits together into something larger without ever feeling manufactured.
The scatter route is the more interesting one. A set of three scatters doesn’t award free spins on its own, but it does trigger the holds, which means a partial scatter set can reel in the missing pieces one re-spin at a time. If the fourth and fifth arrive, the free spins trigger off the back of it; if they don’t, the held scatters pay nothing and the reels release.
Free Spins
Five or more Free Spin symbols activate the free spins round, and the more you land, the more you get:
- 5 Free Spin symbols: 10 free spins
- 6 Free Spin symbols: 15 free spins
- 7 Free Spin symbols: 20 free spins
- 8 Free Spin symbols: 25 free spins
- 9 to 15 Free Spin symbols: 30 free spins
During the round, every coin win is tripled. That x3 is the whole difference between the bonus and the base game, so the value of the feature rests almost entirely on hitting it in the first place, which takes five scatters to do.
Sticky Wins runs inside the free spins too, since three or more Free Spin symbols trigger it there as elsewhere. A held set of scatters mid-round can therefore walk its way up the spin ladder one re-spin at a time, though the round can’t be retriggered into a second set of spins: the counts above are the ceiling.
In practice the round is a straight upgrade on the base game rather than a different game. Same grid, same lines, same symbols, with every coin win multiplied by three. The paytable’s shape doesn’t change inside the bonus either, so the character symbols that lead the way outside it lead it here as well, only with the multiplier doing the work.
Bets run from 0.25 to 250 per spin, with the 25 lines fixed, so there’s no payline trimming to stretch a budget. The full range is available from the first spin, and the paytable multiples scale off the total bet at whichever stake you’ve set.
Our Honest Verdict
Overall Rating: 7/10
Playing Long Pao is a slow walk through a very pretty palace: most spins are small change, and the reason you’d choose it over something louder is Sticky Wins, which turns even a modest line win into a little bit of theatre while the free reels hunt for company. That’s the strength too. The holds and re-spins give the base game a pulse that the flat paytable on its own never could, and a three-scatter trigger can walk itself up to the bonus one reel at a time.
The weakness is the ceiling. A 700x maximum is small by today’s standards, and the free spins need five scatters before they pay a thing, so the bonus arrives rarely and never retriggered.
It suits players who like steady, frequent hits and a handsome setting more than they need a four-figure multiplier, and the 0.25 entry makes it an easy one to settle into. Anyone chasing enormous wins won’t find them in this court. For everyone else, Long Pao’s hall is a genuinely pleasant place to spend an evening.
Long Pao FAQs
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What is the RTP of Long Pao?
The RTP is 96.96%, which is comfortably above the typical average for online slots. -
How does the Sticky Wins feature work?
Any winning bet line, or three or more Free Spin symbols, locks the reels with winning symbols in place while the remaining reels re-spin. Re-spins continue as long as new wins land, and when a re-spin produces nothing new, all active wins pay out. -
How many Free Spin symbols do you need for the free spins round?
You need five or more Free Spin symbols to activate free spins. Five awards 10 spins, six gives 15, seven gives 20, eight gives 25, and nine to 15 awards the maximum of 30. -
What is the maximum win on Long Pao?
The maximum win is 700x your bet. -
What is the hit frequency of Long Pao?
Wins land on roughly 25% of spins, so you can expect a hit around one spin in four. -
What does the wild symbol do in Long Pao?
The wild is a dragon robe icon that substitutes for all symbols except the Free Spin symbol, so it can complete winning lines but never counts as a scatter. -
Can the free spins round be retriggered?
No. The spin counts are fixed by how many Free Spin symbols triggered the round, topping out at 30 for nine to 15 symbols, and the round cannot be retriggered. -
What do free spins pay in Long Pao?
Every coin win during the free spins round is tripled, so each win pays three times what the same combination would return in the base game. -
What are the minimum and maximum bets on Long Pao?
Bets run from 0.25 to 250 per spin, with all 25 paylines fixed.
