Rage of the Seas

Avast Ye! The motley crew is getting ready to set sail for a pillaging tour on the slot from NetEnt. Join them on Rage of the Seas to become a reel pirate for a day and return in glory with untold treasures worth up to 5,000 times your bet. An expanding reel set as well as Feature Spins and Free Spins with Spreading and Stacked Wilds, Minor and Major Reel Upgrades, Multipliers and unlimited retriggers will be your companions on your quest for riches.

Slot Details

Rage of the Seas is a 5×4 video slot with 1,024 ways as default. During the gameplay and bonus features, it can expand up to 4-7-7-7-4 format with then 5488 ways. Wins are awarded for three to five matching symbols on adjacent reels from left to right only. You can join the pirate crew on desktop or mobile from 0.20 to 400 credits per spin. The game has medium volatility with an RTP of 96.04%.

For once, NetEnt produced a visual feast for the eyes. The game window is held on the stern of a pirate ship sailing at night in the midst of open waters. Triggering the features will open up the view into the distance while the motley crew dominates on the reels. An intense sea battle will begin the soon you enter the free spins. A dramatic soundtrack with occasional cries of the pirates and battle sounds accompanies the usual reel and win count noises.

The pay symbols start at the low end with ship wheels, rum bottles, anchors, powder barrels, parrots and hammer sharks, awarding 0.4x to 0.75x your bet for a single five of a kind. They are complemented by four pirate misfits – a pirate with a knife between his teeth, a pirate lady with a scratch in her face, a one-eyed pirate lady and the bearded pirate captain, Hit five across the reels to win 1.25x to 2.5x your stake. An octopus is the wild symbol while a cannon port acts as the Boost symbol, appearing on the three centre reels only. Lastly, a skull marked with the word itself is the scatter.

Rage of the Seas Slot Features

NetEnt didn’t just do an extra effort on the graphics but also went to great length to cram a ton of features into the gameplay. Question is whether they will be able to make up for the very low symbol pays. As is, you will need a whole lot of matching symbols across the reels to score a sizeable win. Well, let’s give it a chance to shine and list the features in the best chronological order. After all, there might be a good bounty up for grabs.

Core to collecting a big bounty speak scoring a sizeable win are the expanding reels. The game plays as default in a 5×4 format with 1,024 ways and windows covering the expansion area on top of reels two, three and four. Landing one or two Boost symbols on any spin will see the door of the cannon port opening and a monkey jumping upwards to unlock the respective window to uncover three additional reel positions, thus increasing the number of ways to win – 1 boost symbol leads to 1,792 ways, 2 boost symbols to 3,136 ways and 3 boost symbols to 5,488 ways. Hitting three Boost symbols will expand all three reels and trigger the Free Spins feature.

Each Boost symbol will award 4 Feature Spins which are paid spins with random modifiers activated for their duration. Should you land more Boost symbols while Feature Spins are in play, then that reel is opened up as well. Plus, you’ll get an additional random modifier and +4 Feature Spins. Any Boost symbol appearing on an expanded reel will also retrigger +4 Feature Spins. The game will reset to the default once you run out of Feature Spins. Five random modifiers are on offer, each having a coloured flag unfold on either side of the expanded reels once they are activated.

• Spreading Wilds – Purple Flag: Any octopus wild landing on reels two, three or four will transform two random adjacent positions into wilds, however, not on reel one or five.
• Stacked Wilds – Blue Flag: The octopus wild can appear on reels two, three and four as stacked wild covering 1 to 4 reels positions.
• Major Reel Upgrade – Black Flag: All medium-value anchor and barrel symbols are removed from the reels for the duration of the feature
• Minor Reel Upgrade – Brown Flag: All low-value ship wheel and bottle symbols are removed from the reels for the duration of the feature.
• Multiplier – Green Flag: All wins are multiplied by x2

The Free Spins feature can be triggered in multiple ways, making the process rather confusing until you have seen it play out a few times. First, your normal scatter trigger will get you 5, 8 or 12 free spins for three, four and five scatters, respectively. Secondly, landing three Boost symbols outright on a base game spin will open up the reels to the maximum height and trigger 5 free spins.

However, should you open up all three reels while playing Feature Spins, then it will award 5 free spins and add any remaining Feature Spins to the tally.

Sounds complicated? Well, there is more. Land three or more scatters plus one or more Boost symbols on the same base game spin and you will instantly enter the free spins feature with each boost symbol awarding an extra +4 free spins once the reels have expanded. Lastly, hit three or more scatters during Feature Spins and the Free Spins feature is yet again awarded with the remaining Feature Spins added to the number of free spins.

Dizzy yet? The explanation for all this malarkey is that Feature Spins are paid spins and will turn then into Free Spins should you manage to hit any of the needed combinations/scatters/symbols.

Brace for an intense sea battle as the pirates are launching their attack at the start of the round. The Free Spins are played on the fully expanded game window with 5,488 ways and three randomly selected modifiers, which will be active throughout the feature (look out for the extended flags). Any Boost symbol landing will add +2 free spins, no limits.

Final Verdict

If you are scratching your head by now, don’t worry, I did the same at the start of this review. While the graphics and visuals are outstanding, the gameplay looks awfully convoluted at first. It will need quite a few triggers to fully understand what’s happening.

Slot connoisseurs will see some resemblance to NetEnt’s blockbuster slot The Wish Master. The paid Feature Spins happen though quite frequently, thus taking up a good chunk of the RTP which in turn leads often to rather long waits between Free Spins triggers.

As for the max win potential, that has been noted at 5,000 times your bet with odds of 1:25.8 billion spins. Doubtful that we will ever see it happening. According to the datasheet, the main potential is in the 100x to 625x range. Not overly exciting but quite the norm for most NetEnt slots, especially for those with low to medium volatility. Still, overall an entertaining game that will be worth a few spins in a session. Aaaaargh!

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