Emperor Panda Slot Review, Demo Play, Payout, Free Spins & Bonuses

Emperor Panda Review

Emperor Panda is a brand new slot by the notorious provider RTP. As the title implies, the game focuses on the most notable Chinese animals, pandas, hinting us at what to expect from this slot. Besides the Asian setting, RTG’s creation features a couple of extras that would surely enliven the gameplay, though, the same cannot be said about the math model which leaves much to be desired. Let’s take a closer look.

Emperor Panda - Outlook

Players will be taken to the Chinese wildlife. The semi-transparent reels showcase a misty serene forest with bamboo trees spread all over the place. However, the game’s appearance fails to impress for the visuals are rather basic. Even though it’s not the best graphical slot for sure, it manages to convey the general ambiance of a serene jungle, which is complemented by an enigmatic soundtrack that captures the essential vibe and adds a final touch to the gameplay.

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Heading to the paytable reveals a pack of 9 regular symbols that involve 5 lows and 4 highs.

Here we see a bunch of bamboo-patterned A-9 royals that make up the low pays, while the premiums include various beasts such as birds, monkeys, red pandas, and tiger. According to the title, pandas should be the top stars here, though, they do not have any own value. They’re regular Wilds that help you to form winning combinations by substituting any other regular symbols. Moreover, it’s only possible for them to land onto reels 2, 3, 4, and 5.

The actions take place across a 5x3 sized grid with 50 ways to play, so full combos must involve 5 instances of the same symbol on a line, though, a minimum of 3 is required to score a win. A full line of low-paying symbols pays from 5x to 8x of the total bet, while premiums are worth from 15 to 80 times the stake.

Emperor Panda is powered by a medium volatile math model, so wins will theoretically occur fairly often.

It’s playable from 0.5$ to 50$ per spin, so players will have a nice range of betting options to choose from. However, the maximum potential is kinda frustrating since all you can hope for is a 1,000x payout, which is 50,000$ on a single spin when playing with the max bet option available.

Emperor Panda - Bonus Features

When it comes to the features, RTG’s brainchild has a couple of exciting extras to offer. Players will benefit from Free Spins as well as the Hold and Win feature, which is the key to hitting the jackpot here.

The Free Spins bonus game can be triggered via landing 3 or more Scatters anywhere in view during the base game. However, the number of Scatters doesn’t influence the number of spins given, thus players will proceed to the game no matter how many special symbols they managed to land. Anyway, a Scatter Pay will also be awarded whenever the Free Spins feature is triggered, with 3, 4, and 5 Scatters awarding 0.2x, 0.5x, and 100x of the bet respectively.

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Furthermore, you can extend the feature by landing more Scatters while in Free Spins. Whenever 3 or more Scatters land anywhere on the grid during the bonus game, players will be given an additional 3 spins. The bonus will end when no spins are left or the maximum win is achieved, whichever comes first.

The next and the most desired extra is the Jackpot Emerald Feature, or to be more precise, Hold and Win.

Should 6 or more emerald symbols land on the grid during the base or the bonus game, players will get access to the feature. All triggering emerald symbols will be locked and remain in place for the duration of the feature, and players will proceed to the bonus with 3 Respins to start. Whenever new emeralds appear, they get locked in place, though, oddly enough, the number of Respins does not reset.

It happens when emeralds occupy the corner positions of the reel set, and when all 4 corner positions are filled, the reel set expands to become 6x3 in size. The second time players manage to do so will transform the grid into a 6x4 sized one, and eventually to 8x4 after the third. The feature comes to an end when no Respins are left or the entire grid is filled with emeralds. It’s also possible to extend the feature by landing emeralds on the corner positions of an 8x4 grid, which will award +1 Respin for each emerald.

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At the end of the Jackpot Emerald Feature, all symbols will reveal a random multiplier value from 3x to 250x or a jackpot.

There are 4 of them in total, including Mini and Minor, which can be revealed in any position of the grid, and Major and Mega, which can be revealed only in the corner position of an 8x4 grid.

Emperor Panda - Summary

As alluded to earlier, it’s not gonna amaze in terms of the graphics, and to be honest, it concerns the features also. You won’t find any kind of innovations here for all the extras are present in loads of other slots. It’s the Hold and Win feature that is the highlight here, however, it also fails to provide any motivation to give RTG’s title a spin since the win cap of 1,000x of the bet is hardly worth the risk.

It might become a nice option in case you’re OK with the relatively low potential, though, true casino hounds would skip this title beforehand for sure. It could have been better if only the developers included progressive jackpots instead of those fixed ones so that players will feel drawn to chase some massive rewards here.

With that being said, Emperor Panda is hardly worth being spun. RTG has a lot of much more appealing games in their portfolio, so in case your gaze fell upon exactly this developer, you’d better check some of the top RTG titles that are undoubtedly worth a try.