Lanterns & Lions Hold & Win Slot Review, Demo Play, Payout, Free Spins & Bonuses

Lanterns & Lions: Hold & Win Review

The Cai Shen (or Caishen) is the highly popular Chinese god of wealth and good fortune, and the Emperor-looking deity certainly takes center stage in this latest installment in iSoftBet’s Hold & Win range. Lanterns & Lions: Hold & Win comes with a pretty typical oriental theme, where gold and red dominate the color scheme, and the Cai Shen Wilds expand to fill the entire reel when 3 land at the same time.

The base game is also graced by the randomly triggered Lucky Envelope instant cash prize, and this is the only way to crack the game’s 8,888x potential. Both the Bonus Round, which comes with extra wilds, and the Hold & Win feature, come with far lower overall potentials than that, unfortunately, but it adds a bit of tension knowing that solid payouts can come out of the blue as you grind along in the base game.

Lanterns & Lions: Hold & Win Slot - Reels Screen

Lanterns & Lions: Hold & Win Features

The 3 lower-value premium symbols all pay 4x your stake for 5 of a kind wins, while the top-tier golden Maneki-neko pays 6x your stake for the same. The Cai Shen Wild can step in for all regular pay symbols to help complete winning combinations, but the wild holds no value of its own. The wild tends to land in stacks, and landing 3 wilds anywhere at the same time on reels 2 to 5 expands the wilds to cover the entire reels.

You’ll see a Red Envelope up in the right-hand side corner, and it will shake at random times when you play. This may, or may not, award the random instant cash prize that pays 8, 88, 888 or 8,888 x your stake immediately when the feature triggers.

The Dancing Lions Pick Game is triggered when you land 3 dragon scatters anywhere in view. Pick 1 of the 2 dancing lions, and you’re guaranteed to trigger the Bonus Round or the Hold & Win feature.

Lanterns & Lions: Hold & Win Slot - Pick'em Game

The Bonus Round awards 8, 10 or 12 free spins randomly, as well as 25, 50, 75 or 100 extra wilds that will be added to the reelstrips during the feature.

The expanding wild feature works the same in the bonus round, so landing 3 anywhere on reels 2 to 5 expands the wilds to cover the full reels. You retrigger the feature when 3 scatters land, giving you the same amount of free spins you got initially.

The Hold & Win feature can also be triggered by landing 5+ lantern bonus symbols in the base game, and this awards 3 starting respins with the triggering lanterns sticky on an otherwise cleared 5x3 grid. Each new non-blank symbol you land becomes sticky as well, and this resets the respins tally back to 3 again.

You can land regular lantern symbols with random cash values, as well as Mini, Minor and Major jackpot symbols that are worth 30, 100 and 500 x your stake, respectively. You can land multiple smaller jackpots this way, but the 1,000x Grand Jackpot is only won if you manage to fill the entire grid with non-blank symbols.

The 200 Spins Lanterns & Lions: Hold & Win Experience

You get a good taste of what the base game is like in the first minute and a half, before we trigger the Dancing Lions Pick Game around 1:25 into the 5-minute highlights video. We got the bonus round with 8 free spins and 75 extra wilds added.

Right after the feature has played out, we skip to the Hold & Win feature, and you can see it all for yourself by hitting the play button below.

Review Summary

iSoftBet has been on a Hold & Win spree lately, and Lanterns & Lions: Hold & Win is a decent enough installment with a pretty straightforward Chinese mythology theme. The most you can hope for in the base game is 125x your stake from a single spin, with or without assistance from the expanding wild feature. It therefore helps a lot that you can also trigger the Lucky Envelope instant cash prize, which can go as high as 8,888x your stake.

The bonus round comes with plenty of extra wilds, making the expanding wilds feature far more likely to trigger. Still, landing 12 free spin max wins in a row “only” awards 1,800x your stake in total. The Hold & Win feature cannot pay much more than that in total either, so truly big wins will only come from the random Lucky Envelope prize. There is nothing game-changing going on here perhaps, but we still had an okay time testing this oriental release.

Pros

• 3 wilds expand on reels 2-5
• FS w/ up to 100 extra wilds
• Hold & Win w/ up to 1,000x jackpots
• Random instant cash prize up to 8,888x

Cons

• Max win is below 2,000 except for cash prize

If you enjoy Lanterns & Lions: Hold & Win you should also try:

Moon Spirit Hold & Win - is a tad more volatile installment in iSoftBet’s hold & win range, and this cartoonish-style Native American release comes with up to x8 multiplier wilds and random mystery symbols. The hold-and-win symbols can be upgraded in the feature, and you can win up to 6,480x your stake at the most.

The Great Wall - is a somewhat unusual Chinese-themed release from iSoftBet, and it takes you back to the Ming Dynasty when the Great Wall was still under construction. The Emperor can land on any reel, and this awards instant prizes up to 1,000x from the Wall, and all the prizes are doubled in the bonus round.

Dragon Hot Hold and Spin - is a high risk/reward installment from Reel Kingdom, and you’ll benefit from 2 random wild features that can bring in solid payouts on occasions.

A repeat wins Big Money Wheel can be triggered in the hold-and-win style feature, awarding total prizes up to 20,000x your stake at the most.

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