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30 September 2024 
Merlin’s Grimoire Slot Review 2024
Join a young and inexperienced Merlin as he seeks out the ancient Grimoire of spells, in Play’n GO’s latest Arthurian Legends release, Merlin’s Grimoire!
Play’n GO is taking us back to a time when Merlin was nothing more than your average young man, before he became the wise, white-haired Wiazard that we know of today. Young Merlin must seek out the Grimoire, an ancient spellbook full of magical secrets and Merlin’s destiny. Will Merlin be successful and become the legendary Wizard that we know him to be?
Merlin’s Grimoire may be an old dusty book to some, but Play’n GO has bought it back to life in a new ‘Book’ style slot. As far as Arthurian Legend slots go, Play’n GO are the masterminds behind the popular series, which has brought us The Sword and the Grail, The Green Knight, 15 Crystal Roses and Diamonds of the Realm.
Merlin’s Grimoire might share similarities to the Arthurian tale series in terms of lore, but gameplay here looks quite unrelated.
With so many Merlin inspired slots out there, will Merlin’s Grimoire stand a chance? Let’s play on and find out!
Merlin’s Grimoire Base Game and Features
Merlin’s Grimoire is a 5 reel slot with up to 7,776 ways to win. In order to form a winning combination, you will need to connect 3 or more (or 2 or more of any High-paying symbol) from left to right, starting from the left-most reel. The minimum bet available here is £/€0.10 per spin and the maximum bet available is £/€100 per spin, with plenty of other options in between the two.
Looking into symbols, the highest paying regular symbol in Merlin’s Grimoire is Merlin himself, followed by Merlin’s Staff, Potion Bottle and Scroll. Low-paying symbols fall to a selection of coloured Tokens. The Yellow, Red and Orange Tokens all have the same pay value, followed by the Purple, Blue and Green Tokens. The Wild symbol also acts as a Scatter, which substitutes for all High and Low-paying symbols.
Like many Play’n GO titles, Merlin’s Grimoire has an exciting Splitting Reels feature in both the Base Game and Free Spins. Not the feature we’re used to, but it’s certainly a welcoming one and brings some much-needed thrill to an otherwise boring base game. More on this below.
Splitting Symbols
During any random spin in the base game, reels 2, 3 and 4 have the ability to become Splitting Reels.
Once this happens, 1 or more of the selected reels will Light Up and all the symbol positions will split into two, doubling up winning payways. This feature is not entirely new to us, which we’ve had the pleasure of experiencing in Forge of Gems before this.
Merlin’s Grimoire Free Spins
Landing 3, 4 or 5 Scatters in any position on the reels, triggers the Free Spins round, awarding 10 Free Spins and a payout of 0.8x,1.6x and 4x your current bet.
Before Free Spins can begin, the game will choose either a High or Low-paying symbol, which will become your Expanding symbol for the duration of Free Spins. Similar to the base game, the Splitting Symbols Feature is active, but instead of it being limited to 3 reels, all 5 reels are actively able to Split, opening up ways to win to a maximum of 7,776!
During the Free Spins round, a minimum of 2 High-paying symbols are required for Expansion, whereas a minimum of 3 Low-paying symbols are needed for Expansion to occur. The good thing is that regardless of which symbol you get, they are not required to be adjacent to one another for Expansion to happen.
Merlin’s Grimoire: Our Verdict
There was a few things that Merlin’s Grimoire could have been. He’s featured in the Play’n GO catalogue many times, and each brings a new perspective on the life of the infamous Merlin.
In this instalment, we get a bit of an amalgamation of two slot mechanics. On one hand, we’ve got the classic ‘Book of’ style slot with expanding symbols in the bonus, and to add to the excitement, Play’n GO has sprinkled a bit of their split symbols in there too.
You’ll recognise this sort of gameplay if you’re familiar with their ‘Gems’ series of slots, like Forge of Gems and prism of Gems. Both seems to complement each other quite well, and while it’s not an overly innovative game overall, it sort of is if you think about how the features work together.
Potential can feel a little watered down because of how Play’n GO opted for ‘ways to win’ instead of traditional pay lines, which is something that we’re used to with Book Slots. However, once the split feature kicks in then the potential can be quite evident.
Overall potential is 30,000x the bet, which is a lot higher than normal Book slots.
Overall, Merlins Grimoire is a little bit of a dark horse in a way. You come expecting more of the same, but what you get instead is a few of your favourite features in one big package, resulting in high-octane gameplay and big potential.
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