Hand of Midas 2

Hand Of Midas 2: Slot Overview

As experienced online slot players are no doubt aware, King Midas was the chap who could turn things into gold just by touching them. You can see the appeal for online gamblers - gently touch the mouse, click the spin button on the screen, and turn a static reel set into one that pours forth riches like a crooked Roman tax collector's chest overflowing with coins. At least, that's the dream; there's no telling what reality will bring. What Pragmatic Play has brought is Hand Of Midas 2, a sequel to the original slot The Hand of Midas, a Greek Mythology-themed cousin of The Dog House, kind of, with alterations. Maybe a third cousin. Hand of Midas 2 sticks closely to the original release, but with a number of tweaks we can go over.

The same goes for Hand Of Midas 2's artwork, which is close yet faintly tweaked compared to the original. A blue-lit room is the place, gold coins lying about the floor, and a freaky big floating hand holding a win multiplier counter. As stated, the looks are about on par with what they were before, maybe more crisply defined. Debatable, though, because if you squint, it might be difficult to tell the two apart. The same goes for the gameplay to an extent, yet adjustments do push the games down diverging tracks.

Pragmatic Play has decided not to mess with the matrix, returning the 5x3 gaming grid with its 20 paylines, awarding winning combinations left to right from the leftmost reel. The five fully yellow lightning bolts at the game rules page alert players to the fact Hand Of Midas 2 is highly volatile, and it spits out an RTP of 96.07% by default. A wide range of bet levels is on offer, as is Prag's way, from the lowest stake of 20 cents to a maximum of $/€240. A bonus buy is here, too.

The same pay symbols as before have made their way into Hand Of Midas 2. They are rock-hewn 10-A card royals, worth 1.25 - 2.5 times the bet for 5 OAK, followed by cups, fruit, chests, a golden lady, a bearded chap, and King Midas as the premium symbols. A 5-of-a-kind high pay combination is worth 5 to 20 times the stake. Hitting on reels 2, 3, and 4 is the wild symbol. One thing the wild can do is substitute for all of the regular paying symbols. Also, whenever a wild hits, it can have a multiplier of x2, x3, x5, or x10, which applies to the total win of the spin. If more than 1 wild hit, multipliers add to each other.

Hand Of Midas 2: Slot Features

Since there's nothing else of note for the base game, let's jump right into the bonus round. This is triggered when 3 scatter symbols hit, awarding 2x the bet plus entrance to the free spins feature. Scatter symbols appear in the base game on the leftmost, middle, and rightmost reels. Before the round begins, for each triggering scatter, 3 mini reels appear, displaying a possible number of 1, 2, or 3 spins. When the mini reels finish spinning, the numbers they display are tallied up, and this is the number of free spins you get.

The free spins round has a general multiplier that applies to the total win of every spin. When wilds hit, they can do so carrying a +2x, +3x, +5x, or +10x multiplier. Every time a wild lands, it remains sticky on the reels until the end of the feature, and the general multiplier increases by the value shown on any wilds carrying one of the multiplier values.

Scatters appear on the leftmost and rightmost reels in the bonus round. Hitting 2 scatter symbols causes a retrigger. For every scatter that triggered the feature, 3 mini reels appear, containing 1, 2 or 3 free spins. They all spin and award the total number of free spins they show. There are no limits to the number of possible retriggers.

Buy Free Spins

For 100 times the bet, players can buy the free spins bonus round. When bought, 4, 5, or 6 scatters are guaranteed to hit randomly. The RTP for the bonus buy is 96.04%.

Hand Of Midas 2: Slot Verdict

That was puzzling. Pragmatic Play has rearranged some of The Hand Of Midas' parts to come up with Hand Of Midas 2, and the confusing part was deciding whether the end result is an improvement, a detrimental step back, or more or less the same. One main difference is that in the original game's free spins round, every single landed wild increased the global multiplier. In Hand Of Midas 2, maybe you'll get a multiplier incrementing wild symbol; maybe you won't. In both free spins features, wilds are sticky, which is a plus, and the pre-feature free spins generator means Hand Of Midas 2 echoes The Dog House again, but it's still hard to decide whether this new system is the better choice.

Two things about Hand Of Midas 2, which might move it onto some players' preferred lists, are the higher possible multiplier values on the wilds and the larger win cap. Loosening the cap from 5,000x to 8,000x might be a motivator, might not; it is probably best to see Hand Of Midas 2 in action to get the full picture. Free spins arguably have a different vibe to them, with Hand Of Midas 2 being the more do-or-do-not of the two. Simply because not every landed wild, though sticky, coughs up an additional value for the global multiplier like they did in The Hand of Midas. However, getting an x10 value could give the multiplier an immediate and helpful bump up.

So, it's a tough call trying to land on which is the better game. If nothing else, Hand Of Midas 2 provides options for gamblers who got a thrill out of the previous one's style of play and are interested in offshoots that takes the action on diverging tangents.