The Warrior Ways slot is the latest game from online slot creators Hacksaw Gaming, currently scheduled for release in a couple of weeks on March 29 2022. Take a quick look at the first introduction screen and see if you can guess where the developer found their inspiration for this new online slot… any ideas? In the meantime, Hacksaw’s latest has an RTP of 96.33%, 1,024 pay ways, and a maximum jackpot win of 10,000x your stake.
The new game features a VS battle feature that will initiate a fight between two characters when the correct combination of symbols appears, as well as two bonus games labelled “Clash” and “Conquest”. The Clash bonus round is similar to the VS battle feature with a few added tweaks and twists, whilst the Conquest bonus is a free spins feature that begins by awarding the player ten spins with the ability to accumulate more.
All sound enthralling enough for you so far? Then read on in our full review to find out about all the finer details in this game. Oh, we’ve added a free demo slot of Warrior Ways for you to try out too. Access this at any time on your desktop, tablet, and mobile devices.
| Provider | Hacksaw Gaming |
| Reels | 5 |
| Rows | 4 |
| Paylines | 1,024 |
| Bonus Rounds | 1 |
| Bet Range | 0.10 - 100 |
| Volatility | High |
| Max Win | 10,000x |
| Bonus Buy | Yes |
| RTP | 96.33% |
| Our Rating | 7.1 |
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Warrior Ways Demo Slot
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Warrior Ways Slot Theme, Stakes, Pays & Symbols
So, have you come up with any ideas about the theme behind the Warrior Ways online slot yet? If the introduction screen didn’t give it away, then the reel strips certainly should do, especially if you are old enough to remember the 1990s. I believe this game was inspired by the Mortal Kombat series of one-on-one fighting games, which was first released during the fighting game craze created by Capcom’s Street Fighter 2: The World Warrior. Whilst many developers tried and mostly failed to clone the magic of Capcom’s worldwide mega-hit, Arcade developer Midway went their own way. Mortal Kombat used a completely different control scheme, added a tonne of blood and gore, and introduced the concept of finishing moves or “Fatalities”. The result was a game that managed to dethrone Street Fighter 2 as the king of the arcades, at least temporarily.
The paytable for the Warrior Ways slot game is as simple as they come but also slightly bewildering at first glance. There are four low-paying symbols and four high-paying picture symbols with matching colours – so far, so what – the interesting part is that all of the symbols in each of those two categories all pay the exact same amount. How much is that? Just 1x your stake for five-of-a-kind of the “high-paying” symbols and 0.5x for the others… what? The wild symbol does return 50x your bet for five-of-a-kind, but how can there only be one symbol which pays more than you are betting? After seeing this, I was intrigued to learn what was going on.
The minimum and maximum bet sizes are set at €0.10 and €100.00 per spin respectively, and there are plenty of options in between the two extremes to suit most players. The bottom end of the spectrum does have far more steps than the top end, although anybody that is betting more than €25.00 per spin probably isn’t going to be troubled by this.
Base Game & Modifiers
So what’s going on here? All of the game’s symbols are stacked on every reel, so I do no doubt that it is possible to win on lots of pay ways simultaneously. The game is played on an extended 5×4 playfield with 1,024 pay ways, – a full screen of matching high-paying symbols should therefore be possible, returning 1,024x your bet.
I still felt like there must be more going on here, and waited eagerly for one of the game’s mods or features to appear. Do these bonuses make up for the disappointing paytable? Let’s find out:
Vs Battle Feature
The VS symbol appears on reels two, three, and four, and you’ll need to land at least one character symbol on either side of this special symbol to initiate the VS battle feature. Each of the two characters will be assigned a Duel Multiplier at the beginning of this feature which can be 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x, 10x, 15x, 20x, 25x, 50x, or a maximum of 100x.
The two characters will then have a virtual battle and the winning character will replace all visible symbols which belong to their opponent. The way this works is that each character is part of a clan and the low-paying symbol for each clan is coloured similarly to the character symbol to make it easily identifiable.
The winning clan might replace all of the losing clans low paying symbols, high paying symbols, or both. I found that quite often it simply didn’t matter who won – I wasn’t going to win anything anyway as there wasn’t a matching coloured symbol on the third reel. It’s extremely frustrating to see the VS battle begin when you know you have lost anyway – this definitely isn’t a feature that makes up for the poor paytable!
Warrior Ways Slot Free Spin Feature
I wasn’t feeling confident about the Warrior Ways slot game by this point, but I was still confused. This slot has an RTP of 96.33%, yet it feels like a struggle to win anything more than you are betting from each spin. The answer must be here in these two bonus rounds.
This isn’t hugely unusual for an online slot – lots of games require players to hit the scatters before they have a chance at the biggest wins. The difference here is that the base game feels as if it has almost no potential at all, and that is a little unusual.
This game features two sets of scatter symbols, one for each of the two bonus rounds described here. This is another problem as it is possible to have four mismatched scatters littering the screen, blocking other wins whilst not awarding a feature.
Clash Feature
After triggering the clash bonus the reel set will be swapped for a new “Collect Mode” set which contains only blank symbols, VS symbols, and new Clan Multiplier symbols. You begin the feature with three spins and this will be reset back to three each time a VS or clan multiplier symbol lands on the screen. The aim of the collect phase is to collect as many of these VS and Clan Multiplier’s as possible before the Clash Phase. An ”Epic” clan multiplier appears only on the third reel and will double any regular clan multiplier symbols which are visible each time it drops.
When you run out of spins during the collect phase, the Clash phase will begin. The number of free spins you are awarded during this phase is determined by the number of VS symbols collected during the Collect phase. Every spin during the Clash phase guarantees a VS battle and the multipliers used for those battles is determined by the Clan multipliers collected during the Collect phase… did you get all that? It isn’t as complicated as it first sounds!
The multipliers you can collect during this mode range from 1x to 100x just as in the base game although the “Epic” multiplier does allow you to double this to 200x. Finally, some big win potential! I managed to hit more than 500x during testing from this feature and I could easily have won much more than this if I had managed to collect some higher multipliers during the Collect phase. Thumbs up for this bonus!
Conquest Free Spins Feature
Finally we have the free spins feature – is this another winner? Any VS battles that occur during your ten free spins will result in the losing clans symbols being removed from the reels. If you can eliminate three of the clans through battles then the rest of your free spins are guaranteed to result in big wins with a huge number of winning pay ways, but I never saw this whilst I was testing the game.
This is certainly an addictive feature, however; I’d love to see how much potential this part of the game has, but it took me more than 20 minutes to hit three Conquest scatters several times. I have to conclude that this bonus is less common than the Clash bonus, although this could just be the result of luck.
Feature Buy
If you want to get into the thick of the action right from the very off, and you’re playing from a region where feature buy slots are still active, then you can buy your way into the bonus round on Warrior Ways. The following 2 options are available to you.
- Clash Feature: 100x bet to buy.
- Conquest Free Spins: 400x bet to buy.
Pros
- High Maximum win.
- Good RTP of 96.33%.
Cons
- The base game lacks any real bite or excitement
Warrior Ways Slot Review Final Thoughts
I’m completely torn as to how I feel about Hacksaw’s Warrior Ways – the base game is a complete dud, and the VS battle/Duel feature isn’t much better. The two bonus rounds both seem as if they could be fantastic, but actually hitting them felt extremely difficult. Overall I feel like this is a game that players are either going to love or hate – give it a try yourself and see which way it makes you feel!
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