Lord Merlin And The Lady Of The Lake Slot Overview
We’re going back in time with this game with our very dear friend Merlin in a Prequel to Rise of Merlin.
Lord Merlin and the Lady of the Lake Slot shows a younger, naïve and lovestruck Merlin in his volatile story of love with Lady Vivian, the Lady of the Lake.
Lord Merlin and the Lady of the Lake Slot promises an easy-going experience which is fun and exciting, with some familiar features such as expanding symbols.
Play’n Go have a proven track record for releasing exciting games that follow the expanding symbol formula, with Book of Dead, Legacy of Dead and Rise of Merlin now considered all time greats.
Let’s see how Lord Merlin and the Lady of the Lake holds up compared to these legendary titles.
Young Love
The first thing you notice as you embark on a story of love is the difference from the previous game, Lord Merlin and the Lady of the Lake has a completely different design, enough so that you wouldn’t even know that it’s part of the same series.
The scenery for this game is set upon a beautiful lake, within a forest of picturesque looking trees. It’s definitely a far cry from what the first game was, and you can tell that the design quality is top notch, as per usual Play’n GO standards.
Betting and Symbols
Betting options for Lord Merlin and the Lady of the Lake Slot are very much in line with what you’d expect, and identical to previous games.
Betting can be split by Bet Level, Coin Value or Total Bet, which gives you the options to customise in a way you see fit. The lowest option is £/€0.20, and the highest option is £/€100, with plenty of choices in between.
The highest paying Symbols are Vivian, the Lady of the Lake, who also acts as a Wild, and Merlin. Other high paying symbols are Merlin’s Staff, Wizard Hat and Lion Crest.
Low paying symbols consist of the usual suspects, which are A, K, Q, J & 10. The Scatter symbol which is represented by the sword also acts as a Wild in the Free Spins.
The Base Game and Features
The Base Game for Lord Merlin and the Lady of the Lake Slot is pretty identical to the original game, with the exception of the Vivian Wild.
The game is played across 10 pay lines, and 3 or more matching symbols (or 2 higher paying symbols) across any of these 10 pay lines are required to land a win.
Any veterans of the original game knows too well that big wins are even possible in the Base game if you manage to connect big symbols all the way across, and the Wild Symbol will help in making this dream a reality.
The game also see’s the return of their gamble feature, which you may opt into to boost your win. It works by choosing a colour to double the win, or a suit to quadruple it.
Like in Rise of Merlin, this can be done until you have five wins in a row, or reach 2,500 coins.
Free Spins
3 Sword Symbols are required to trigger the bonus, and 8 spins are awarded. A special symbol will be selected on each spin at random to become and expanding symbol in this round.
If your selected symbol is a lower paying one, then you’ll need at least 3 on screen in order for it to expand, or 2 if you have a higher paying symbol.
This is a little different to Rise of Merlin, which would select one symbol for the duration of the round unless a re-trigger happened. Additionally to this, Lord Merlin and the Lady of the Lake introduces Excalibur Spins.
Excalibur Spins
Landing 2 or more Wild Scatters within the Free Spins will trigger Excalibur Spins. One spin is awarded for each Scatter, and in this mode, the Expanding Symbol from Free Spins will be locked for the duration of the Excalibur Spins.
This is a completely new feature, and it’s exciting that it locks them in, and will really help in landing those full screens.
2 or more Wild Scatters are needed to re-trigger, and 2 more spins are awarded. The game has the potential to re-trigger an unlimited amount of times.
Our Verdict
Lord Merlin and the Lady of the Lake Slot is a worthy addition to the Rise of Merlin family, and while there’s a lot of features that are very similar to the first game, there’s certainly enough to make it a game in its own right rather than a copy and paste of the original.
The shining feature here is the Excalibur Spins, which locks in the selected expanding symbols and has the potential to go big. Over 10,000x is up for grabs in this game, which makes it just as viable of Rise of Merlin.
The game is highly volatile, just like the original, and it is a fairly High RTP Slot of 96.20%.
The question you really need to ask when picking the original or this game is which bonus you prefer, as both work in similar yet very different ways.
Overall though, Lord Merlin and the Lady of the Lake Slot is an exciting successor to the original, and we’ll undoubtedly hear tales of big wins from this game going forward.
Lord Merlin and the Lady of the Lake Slot will be available to play on desktop and Mobile Casinos on the 28th of January 2021!