The Pendragon Legend (Mascot Gaming) Slot Demo & Review

The surname ‘Pendragon’ is frequently assigned to both King Arthur and his father Uther, along with the other royal household members in the well-known legend of Camelot. Technically though, the earliest texts that describe Arthurian legend only gave Uther the surname Pendragon, as its literal translation is “dragon’s head” – Uther was the commander-in-chief, so this does make sense. Those of you who have studied English at masters level probably know that this rabbit hole is far too deep even to attempt to dig into here though, so let’s get right back to the vital statistics of Mascot Games online slot titled The Pendragon Legend! This 20-pay line online slot offers an industry-standard 96.10% RTP alongside a slightly confusing jackpot structure – don’t be confused by mentions of 1,000x as the overall maximum is a much more respectable 10,000x the player’s bet.

According to The Pendragon Legend’s information pages, this title’s headline feature is its “Risk’n’Buy” facility. This is a mixture of a regular bonus buy option crossed with the ability to gamble your winnings – after any winning spin, depending on the amount of the win, you may be offered the chance to trade your prize for some number of free spins, or you might be presented with a “risk” offer which is effectively a gamble feature that can grow a modest win into a 1,000x hit. There’s also a free spin-based bonus round and an interesting bonus buy facility that comes with so-called “special offers” that change from one round to the next.

The story of King Arthur, Camelot, and all of the associated legends such as the Sword in the Stone and the Lady of the Lake are enduring tales that have inspired and entertained for centuries – our free The Pendragon Legend demo continues that tradition in style, so go ahead and give it a few spins below!

The Pendragon Slot
ProviderMascot Gaming
Reels5
Rows3
Paylines10
Bonus Rounds1
Bet Range0.20 - 40
VolatilityMedium
Max Win10,000x
Bonus BuyYes
RTP96.10%
Our Rating7.3

The Pendragon Legend Casino Bonuses


The Pendragon Legend Demo


The Pendragon Legend Theme, Stakes, Pays & Symbols

The Pendragon Legend Paytable
The Pendragon Legend Paytable

Of course, whenever a legend becomes as well-known and covered as King Arthur’s, you’re sure to have plenty of competition when it comes to creating the best piece of associated media in any given category. We already checked out Play’N’Go’s take on the Pendragon Legend dubbed Clash of Camelot, scoring it a respectable, if not outstanding, 7.4 a few months back. Pragmatic Play has also had a crack at the tale with their game Excalibur Unleashed, although that one offered a much smaller jackpot than Clash of Camelot. If you have an interest in the story of King Arthur, I’d probably say that the visuals featured in The Pendragon Legend are the most accurate of the bunch, but I suspect most slots fans will be much more interested in the games paytable!

On that note, the most valuable symbols available here are the red dragons, offering 35x the total bet for a full payline of five of a kind. The blue dragons will pay you 25x for all five symbols, matching the prize for hitting a complete line of Sword in the Stone symbols. I’m going to take a guess that the rather regal-looking character symbol is King Arthur, and he’s worth 12.5x your current stake for a five of a kind combination. Merlin and Guinevere also make appearances, with payouts of 7.5x and 5x the total bet, respectively, for a five-of-a-kind combo. There are four low pays too, represented by traditional royal symbols – five Aces or Kings will net you 3.75x the total bet, whilst five Queens or Jacks are a little less valuable at 2.5x each. Tucked away at the bottom of the paytable, I found a little surprise – the wild symbol offers a premium payout of 75x the total bet for a complete pay line, and there’s even a token prize of 10x the current stake for hitting all five scatter symbols.

There are only a limited number of bets available in The Pendragon Legend, which seems to be a common feature of Mascot’s typical output. The minimum/maximum permitted wagers of €0.20 and €40.00 are plenty sufficient in my view, but with only six other bets in between those limits, I can imagine more than a few players being frustrated by these arbitrary restrictions.


Base Game & Modifiers

The Pendragon Legend Base Game
The Pendragon Legend base game

Putting aside the “Risk and Buy” aspect of the gameplay for a moment, The Pendragon Legend is, in many ways, a standard video slot. There are five reels, three rows, and the total of 20 fixed paylines is also fairly average for a machine of this type. The highest-paying red dragons offer a small prize for just two matching symbols on a pay line, whereas everything else requires at least three matches instead.


Risk’n’ Buy Feature

This is a novel inclusion I haven’t seen in any games by developers other than Mascot. Effectively, any winning combination can be gambled for a chance of hitting a bonus round – it’s a little bit like a feature that Big Time Gaming has been including in their recent slots, but the execution here is much better.

The ‘Risk’ offer allows you to try and boost the value of your win from whatever it might be up to a maximum of 1,000x the current stake. On the other hand, the ‘Buy’ side of the deal allows you to purchase a set of free spins using winnings that you have obtained from a regular base game spin. An interesting aspect of this is that if you choose to purchase a bonus in this manner, the free spins will be played at the bet, which results from the ‘risk’ part of the feature rather than the price paid for the original spin. This is a cool way of getting yourself a premium bonus round “on the cheap”, although you are, of course, giving away what may have been a sizeable win for the opportunity!


The Pendragon Legend Slot Bonus Features

The Legend Of Pendragon Free Spins Feature
The Legend of Pendragon free spins feature

Scatter symbols take the form of shields with a crown insignia displayed on them and are present on all five of the game’s reels. There is a small cash prize of 2x, 5x, or 10x the total bet for three, four, or five scatters, respectively, but the real benefit to hitting more than three scatters comes courtesy of the game’s “Click Me” feature.


Free Spins

Before each bonus round begins, all of the triggering scatter symbols will transform into clickable icons, each of which will award either a number of free spins or a multiplier. The more triggering scatter symbols there are, the better your chances are of revealing a substantial multiplier and number of spins.

Whilst there are no other extra features added to the bonus round, the ability to add a multiplier to your winnings ensures that this is by far the most profitable part of the game.


Bonus Buy Feature

There are four options on the bonus buy menu. The first of these is always labelled a “special offer”, and the variables of this change after each round – you may be offered 20 free spins with a 2x multiplier for 45x your stake, for example, or perhaps something entirely different.

The fixed options are priced at 45x, 50x, and 55x and come with 2x, 3x, and 5x multipliers alongside 20, 15, or 10 free spins, respectively.


Pros

  • The Pendragon theme is well executed and compares well with other similar games.
  • A 10,000x jackpot should be enough to attract most players.
  • The risk and buy feature adds a unique and interesting aspect to the gameplay.

Cons

  • The range of permitted bets is very low.
  • It’s unclear why the “special offers” on the bonus buy menu are priced the way they are, so it’s difficult to know when you are being offered the best deal.

Final Thoughts

This machine has quite an “old school” feel to it – it’s a traditional video slot with all of the features you would expect from a game released a decade ago. That’s not necessarily a bad thing though – many modern machines can be overly complex, sometimes to the point that it can put off some players. If you like straight-up slots with big jackpots, you could do a lot worse than giving The Pendragon Legend a try.

7.3

Decent


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