Sword Of Shoguns

Sword of Shoguns: Slot Overview

Since swords have been around for thousands of years, reaching back to the Bronze Age, no one knows for sure who invented them. However, we do know they were popular instruments of war, used across the globe by a number of civilisations that needed something sharp and pointy to poke their enemies with. Swords are also quite popular with software provider Thunderkick which has built a game around them in their 2019 release Sword of Khans and now another one titled Sword of Shoguns. Here we take a look and see sword use is just as effective in the Land of the Rising Sun as it was in the Mongolian empire.

Squint, and you might be confused over which one of the two games you've got on screen. The two have quite similar set-ups where a grid matrix is housed in a pagoda-like structure in a mountainous area as the sun dramatically rises or sets in the background. It's a classic Asian slot view, given a Thunderkick stamp and rather handsomely presented, if a little on the unoriginal side. It might have been nice if the studio had done something more dramatic visually to further separate the two games, but on the other hand, the updated view does link the Sword of Shoguns to Sword of Khans quite neatly as well.

On the betting side, players are able to choose a stake of 10 p/c to $/€100 and wager on individual spins or go straight to the bonus round for the cost of 120 times the stake. When playing in the regular way, Sword of Shoguns has a default RTP of 96.15%, increasing to 96.4% when buying the bonus round. Despite how it might look, Sword of Shoguns is not a Megaways game, even though when hitting the spin button, 2 to 7 symbols randomly land on each reel. However, Thunderkick has programmed the gaming matrix so that symbols always land in a way which creates 5,040 ways to win. So sort of Megaways-ish, sort of not.

For symbols, we find low paying 9 to A card ranks, then a weapon, fan, armour, helmet, and shogun as the premium batch. Symbols must land from the leftmost side of the reel onwards, and they pay 1 to 1.3 times the bet for 6 of the low pays or 2 to 5 times the bet for 6 premiums. All symbols payout for 3 OAK+ combos except the shogun, which pays out on at least 2 OAK.

Sword of Shoguns: Slot Features

At its core, Sword of Khans was a rejigged 'Ra' style game with a few extra bells and whistles. In many ways, this could be said about Sword of Shoguns as well, where the extras to cover here are a wild/scatter symbol and free spins with expanded pay-anywhere symbols which can be retriggered.

Free Spins

The sword symbol in Sword of Shoguns is the wild and the scatter. This means the sword can substitute for any regular pay symbol, and when three or more swords land, the game awards 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, or 12 free spins – the amount awarded is random. A pay symbol is revealed, becoming the special expanding symbol during free spins.

When the chosen symbol lands on at least three reels (two if it is the shogun), they expand to cover all positions on their reels and a win evaluation is then made. In addition, retriggering the bonus round awards, either 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7 extra free spins, plus one other pay symbol, becomes an expanding symbol. Up to 4 symbols can be expanders at the most.

Sword of Shoguns: Slot Verdict

Like pretty much every game, there are pros and cons to Sword of Shoguns. Why don't we clear some of the cons out of the way first? When taking a more cynical perspective, Sword of Shoguns is a little unoriginal, perhaps a lot unoriginal. It looks quite a bit like its predecessor despite representing another culture, for one. Admittedly Sword of Shoguns is a handsome game, the visuals have been upgraded, and the meditating in the mountains effect is a pleasant one. The features, too, if we're being judgmental, are close to those that popped up in games like Sword of Khans, Book of Ra Magic, Magic Mirror Deluxe, Legacy of Dead, or Rise of Merlin; take your pick, really. In other words, nothing massively new to see here.

And yet, if we put our happy hats on for a moment, Sword of Shoguns has everything it needs to entertain fans of some expanding pay from any position symbol action. Sure, there is a glut of this kind of game on the market, but Sword of Shoguns possesses a few tricks to help make it stand out from the bunch. One is the Megaways-ish set-up, which produces a ton more ways to win than the 10 paylines that are often used in a game like this. Alternating the number of symbols on each reel, albeit slightly gimmicky in some ways, adds a few dips and dives to the ride. Get lucky, and the expanding symbol expands on the fuller reels; get not so lucky, and it covers the sparse reels. Get real lucky, and it expands on all 6 reels for the fabled full-screen win, and if the expanded symbol is the shogun, then Sword of Shoguns' max 25,200x the bet win is achieved.

As such, the larger-than-normal max win is another one of the tricks Sword of Shoguns has tucked up its sleeve. An impressive figure, too, not only justifying the far greater ways to win used in the game but large enough so that it should entice players enamoured by this style of play who may be looking for bigger-than-usual potential.