The Sword and The Grail (Play’n GO): Overview

Releasing two to three new titles each month—and even hitting four launches in May 2019 alone—Play’n GO’s output is hard to match. Despite the sheer volume, the studio generally maintains solid build quality, though there have naturally been a few missteps along the way. Contact is a good example: a cascading grid-slot that looked promising when presented at the London iGaming conference, but ultimately landed as fairly average once it went live.

A release that feels far more encouraging is The Sword and The Grail. Here, Play’n GO sticks to a classic format of 5 reels and 3 rows, with wins paid across one or more of the 20 fixed paylines. Don’t mistake the traditional layout for a tame experience: this Arthurian-themed slot can produce serious payouts thanks to Holy Grail wilds that can enhance wins with multipliers up to 100x in the base game. Multipliers are pushed even further in the progressive free spins feature, where you can win up to 10,000 times your stake. The Sword and The Grail is available on all devices with stakes ranging from 10 cents up to 100€ per spin.

The Sword and the Grail looks fantastic, with strong artwork and impressive attention to detail. A grand medieval castle dominates the background, while the reels feature lower-value A, K, Q, J and T symbols shown as various coins. The higher-paying icons are the character symbols, featuring Merlin the enchanter, Lancelot the knight, and Lady Guinevere. The top-paying regular symbol is King Arthur, awarding 25 times your stake for 5 of a kind. The famed Holy Grail acts as the wild, substituting for all symbols except the scatter, and it pays 50 times your stake if you hit a full wild line.

The Sword and The Grail (Play’n GO): Features

Beyond its standard substitution role, the Holy Grail wild can also upgrade your payouts through Wild Multipliers of 2x, 5x, 10x or an enormous 100x, which can lead to very large wins in the main game.

Things really ramp up when you hit 3 or more Excalibur sword scatter symbols anywhere on the screen in a single spin. You begin with 5 Free Spins, and the goal is to gather additional scatters to move through the 4 levels. At level 1, the wild multiplier starts at 2x and increases as you climb through the stages. The levels are as follows:

• Level 2 – collecting 6 Excalibur scatters will give you 5+ free spins and a multiplier wild of 5x.
• Level 3 – collecting another 5 Excalibur scatters will give you 5+ free spins and a multiplier of 10x.
• Level 4 – collecting 7 more Excalibur scatters will give you 5+ free spins and a multiplier of 100x.

Altogether, the feature can award up to 20 free spins, with a top payout of 10,000 times your stake during the free spins round.

The Sword and The Grail (Play’n GO): Verdict

The Sword and The Grail is a very high volatility slot and shares a few traits with NextGen Gaming’s classic hit 300 Shields. Although The Sword and The Grail offers double the potential of Play’n GO’s typical high variance titles, it doesn’t quite reach the same level of raw explosiveness found in 300 Shields. That said, The Sword and The Grail delivers a more even spread of action, with genuine chances at big wins in the base game too—making it less of a pure all-or-nothing experience than the famously punishing 300 Shields.

Overall, this is a strong entry from Play’n GO that should satisfy most fans of high volatility play. The presentation is top-notch, the progressive free spins round stays relentlessly intense, and the possibility of a big hit on any spin is reason enough to keep playing. One caution, though: even if it isn’t the most extreme volatility we’ve encountered, the math model can still feel close to ruthless. Play carefully.

Don’t Miss

This slot also has a follow-up you may want to check out. Called Diamonds of the Realm, it likewise can dish out huge multipliers and major wins.