Imperial Riches (NetEnt): Overview

To bolster its foothold in Asia, NetEnt has lately released a series of titles aimed specifically at Japanese and Chinese audiences. Because tastes vary widely across cultures—and these games lean heavily into a traditional visual style—they can be tricky to assess from a European perspective. It’s surprising how different player preferences can be from one region to another, even when comparing British and Swedish players. With that in mind, and since some of these releases are essentially reskins of older NetEnt slots, we ended up feeling it was best to pass on most of them.

Running on a 5-reel, 15-payline setup, Imperial Riches was the one game from NetEnt’s Asian push that genuinely caught our attention. It uses NetEnt’s classic Avalanche engine that became widely popular after Gonzo’s Quest launched in 2013, and it includes a Free Falls feature that then takes you into the Lucky Pond bonus game which, in turn, can open the door to the jackpot game where local progressive jackpots may be triggered. With a calm, mellow vibe, Imperial Riches is available on all devices with stakes from 0.15 to $/€30 per spin.

Taking place in a peaceful garden filled with ponds and Koi fish, the slot delivers a distinctly traditional atmosphere, supported by a gentle soundtrack. On the reels you’ll find low-value A, K and Q card symbols alongside higher-value bamboo, gold coins, and ingots. The golden fish is the top payer, awarding 100 times your stake for five of a kind on a full payline. The wild is a gong and it shows up only on the three middle reels.

Imperial Riches (NetEnt): Features

The core of Imperial Riches is the Avalanche engine, featured in multiple NetEnt titles like Gonzo’s Quest, Asgardian Stones, Pyramid Quest for Immortality and Elements. If you’ve played any of those, you’ll know the mechanic: symbols that form a win disappear, making room for new symbols to tumble down, which can then create additional wins. In practice, this means a single spin can produce several payouts in a row.

Keep an eye out for the lantern scatter—landing 3, 4 or 5 anywhere on the screen activates the Free Falls feature with 10, 15, or 20 free spins respectively. There isn’t really an added advantage here, since Free Falls mainly serves as a lead-in to what comes next. The key objective is to gather as many jewels as you can, which you receive each time you hit a winning combination.

After that, the Lucky Pond bonus game begins immediately once Free Falls ends. In this round, the jewels you collected during Free Falls fall into the pond and may be eaten by either the coin fish or the bonus fish. When a coin fish grabs a jewel, you receive a cash prize of up to 1x. If the bonus fish consumes three jewels, you’ll unlock the crucial jackpot game.

Reaching the Jackpot Game takes you to a bigger pond featuring a coin fish and five separate jackpot fishes. You start with a fixed total of 50 jewels, which are then dropped into the water and can be eaten by any fish. If the coin fish eats a jewel, you win 1.33 or 2.66 times your stake. As for jackpots, there are 2 fixed jackpots (Rapid = €/$100 & Mini = €/$500) plus 3 progressive jackpots that are local to the casino hosting the game. You’ll also see that each jackpot fish has its own indicator, which rises with every jewel that particular fish consumes.

Imperial Riches (NetEnt): Verdict

From our perspective, Imperial Riches doesn’t offer much excitement. The Asian theme isn’t especially appealing to us, and the overall pace feels far too sleepy. As is common with jackpot-focused slots, the free spins round comes across as largely pointless—more like filler than a feature NetEnt truly needed to include.

Since the Free Falls feature pays exactly the same as the base game, the 1500 times your stake maximum win potential isn’t nearly enough to get the adrenaline going when you trigger the bonus if you’re an experienced player. On the plus side, the 96.88% RTP (88 symbolises fortune in Chinese culture) is notably strong, which could make Imperial Riches handy for wagering. That said, the only compelling reason we can see to play is the 3 progressive jackpots, even though there are much better NetEnt jackpot titles already available. If you want an Asian-inspired NetEnt slot, we recommend trying Koi Princess if you haven’t yet. And if it’s jackpots you’re after, the more recent Mercy of the Gods is a stunning release worth checking out.