Ronin’s Honour

Ronin’s Honour: Slot Overview

Players, mentally prepare yourselves for a world of honour, revenge, battle, codified living… and ninjas. The setting for this monumental showdown is Ronin’s Honour, an online slot from one of the most productive studios on the planet, Play’n GO. For some reason, Ronin’s Honour appears to have piqued the team’s interest as they’ve developed a rich cinematic world to display the showdown in a game armed with Mystery Mask symbols, splitting symbols, and Battle Free Spins, amidst stacks of winning potential.

Online gamblers with an interest in Japanese culture, particularly things like manga or martial arts, should instantly warm to Ronin’s Honour. Sometimes a game has been built in a way that not only inspires one to play it but to noodle around online, looking into the back story. According to Wikipedia, a ronin in feudal Japan was akin to a samurai which had no master or lord, the word meaning ‘wander’, ‘a person of the waves’, or ‘drifter’. Before Play’n GO is tarnished with the ‘woke’ brush, it’s worth pointing out that whilst samurai are usually portrayed by men in pop culture, female samurai also apparently existed, and it is one of these warriors which accompanies players as they plough through Ronin’s Honour. She stands to the left of the screen, before a battled-out wasteland environment, and gets it on with her arch nemesis Hannya and her henchmen.

To Ronin’s immediate left is the game grid, consisting of 5 reels, 3 rows, and 243 ways to win. However, when symbols split, it is possible to have up to 59,049 ways to win in play. A highly volatile game, Ronin’s Honour has been designed with numerous RTP configurations, of which 96.22% is the highest. While playable on any device, users have the option of picking a stake of 5 p/c per spin up to £/€25 at the most which makes it accessible to almost any type of player and budget.

Winning ways are created when matching symbols land on adjacent reels, starting from the leftmost reel onwards. For regular paying symbols, Ronin’s Honour has 8. Half of them are calligraphy style J to A card ranks, while the other half is an assortment of 4 different weapons. Hitting a 5-of-a-kind win pays 0.6 to 0.8 times the bet for the low-pay royals or 3 to 10 times the bet for the higher-paying weapon symbols. Two types of wilds appear in Ronin’s Honour – a Hannya Wild and a Ninja Wild. Both are able to replace regular paying symbols to help create a win.

Ronin’s Honour: Slot Features

Among Ronin’s Honour’s list of features are Mystery Mask symbols which reveal various items, and Battle Free Spins, where a final showdown with Hannya may take place.

Mystery Mask Symbol

Mystery Mask symbols can land in any position in the base game or during free spins. When Mystery Masks hit, they reveal either weapon pay symbols, royal symbols, or Ninja Wild symbols which fill the entire reel. When pay symbols are revealed, they are always all the same type. Additionally, revealed pay symbols may be split, so they count as 1, 2, or 3 ways. Revealed stacked Ninja Wilds start as 1 way for the reel, and they may be split, so they represent 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9 ways.

Battle Free Spins

Landing 3, 4, or 5 scatter symbols triggers the Battle Free Spins feature, plus a payout of 1, 4, or 8 times the bet, respectively. For free spins, the heroine Ronin and the enemy Hannya get 3 lives each. During the round, if a stacked Ninja Wild is not split, Ronin loses a life. If a stacked Ninja Wild is split, Hannya loses a life.

Should Hannya lose all 3 lives, the player is awarded 1 enhanced Hannya Free Spin. For this, a stacked Hannya Wild lands on reels 3, 4, or 5. This stacked Hannya Wild sends stacked mystery demon symbols from reel 1 up to the leftmost adjacent reel to the Hannya Wild. Stacked mystery demon symbols reveal three of the same pay symbol type on each reel. Revealed symbols can then be split 3 to 9 ways per reel – max 3 ways per individual symbol. The Hannya Wild can also be split into 3 to 9 ways. Free spins keep going until the player loses 3 lives, Hannya loses 3 lives, or 50 free spins are played. If Hannya loses her last life on the final 50th spin, then a Hannya Free Spin will be awarded.

Ronin’s Honour: Slot Verdict

With Play’n GO’s busy production schedule, we’re occasionally treated to subpar slots like Wild Bandolier that come across as half-hearted filler. But, every so often, something like Ronin’s Honour comes along which feels like it captured the studio’s imagination, prompting the team to focus on all of the details to create something special, a slot that blurs the lines between animated film, video game, and online slot. First of all, Ronin’s Honour burrows deep into Japanese culture, presenting it in an exciting and absorbing way. Kudos to the team for sticking with the local language and providing subtitles for those unable to understand Japanese. Doing it like this submerges players into the culture from the get-go, dialling in some thrilling animated cutscenes full of dialogue, intrigue, and ninjas.

Next, we get to the gaming and fair dues; Ronin’s Honour does have echoes of Nolimit City‘s release Bushido Ways xNudge about it. If anything, Ronin’s Honour feels just as cinematic if not more so, and should be a treat for those with an interest in Japanese culture, manga, et al. The game’s got a neat build-up between the hero Ronin and the villain Hannya, as one sends forth ninjas, while the other (may) slice them up, hopefully. Factor in the taunts and smack talk each character hurls around, and making it to the bigged-up final Hannya Free Spin might well feel like a colossal showdown. Certainly, colossal winning potential is on the cards, where on paper, Ronin’s Honour comes with a figure of 30,000x the bet at its upper limit.

This number puts it on the same level as Bushido xWays, too, if anyone was wondering, and displays the potency that all the slashing, splits, and extras ways are capable of producing. To sum up, if a well-presented slot steeped in a battle-laden Feudal Japan with exciting features sounds pretty neat, better pop Ronin’s Honour on the try-out list.

Upvote (8)