Legend of the Sea Slot Machine
If taking to the high seas in search of gold sounds like your idea of fun, you may find that Zeus Gaming’s 5-reel, 10-payline slot, Legend of the Sea, is the perfect title to shiver your timbers.
Sticking to the classic Zeus Gaming template of bright, colourful graphics, engaging animations and bonus features that are rewarding yet simple to get to grips with, Legend of the Sea is the perfect game for players who like their slot action to come fast and furious without any unnecessary fuss.
Unlike some of the company’s other games such as Lady of the Forest, Legend of the Sea features two separate bonus features and players are actually able to choose which one they’d prefer to play. This makes a change from a lot of other slot titles where the bonus round is selected at random, as you can actually choose the game that you enjoy most rather than waiting an eternity for your favourite feature to come around.
Set Sail For Simplicity
As with most titles in the Zeus Gaming catalogue, Legend of the Sea aims to put the “fun” in functionality. It is an incredibly straightforward slot machine design with ten fixed paylines, meaning the only element you have to adjust is the amount of coins wagered on each spin of the reels.
With players able to bet between one and 30 coins per line, payouts in Legend of the Sea vary from 5x your stake per line for three matching playing card symbols to a phenomenal 5,000x your stake per line for five of the game’s logo – and that’s before you even consider the bonus multipliers.
Somewhat unusually, the game’s wild symbol – two pirates named Henry Morgan and Annie Bonney – also doubles as the bonus feature symbol, meaning that it can simultaneously replace regular icons to form winning paylines and work as a scatter icon to trigger free spins when three or more appear.
Green Around The Gills
Visually speaking, Legend of the Sea perhaps doesn’t look as great as some of Zeus Gaming’s other titles, with something of an over-reliance on unimaginative playing card symbols detracting from the game’s high seas aesthetic. The unique symbols – a ship, globe, telescope and the game’s logo – are at least on theme, but there aren’t really enough of them to make the reels look that interesting.
Animation-wise, Legend of the Sea also suffers from a bit of a lack of imagination, with the symbols featured in winning paylines merely moving around a bit rather than doing anything particularly exciting. The notable exceptions to this, however, are in the two bonus rounds, which feature wilds that expand to fill the reels, pistols firing at regular icons and wooden panels being smashed apart.
Musically the game chugs along much as you’d expect, with a typically jolly sea shanty playing in the background whenever you spin the reels. This also changes to something a little more upbeat during the bonus feature, but all in all there’s nothing particularly revolutionary in the slot’s musical score.
Choose Your Booty
The good news is that what Legend of the Sea lacks in visual and aural flair, it more than makes up for with its bonus features, which give players the chance to side with their favourite pirate and embark on a unique adventure with its own set of rules and game dynamics.
When three of the wild/scatter symbols appear anywhere on the game board, players will be asked to pick between Morgan and Bonney bonus rounds, with the former offering players 10 free spins and an expanding wild feature and the latter giving them 15 free spins and a 3x multiplier.
While the second option pretty much does what it says on the tin, we’d recommend trying the Morgan bonus feature. This will choose a regular symbol at random and turn it into an expanding wild, meaning that whenever three or more appear during a spin, they’ll grow to fill the entire reel. This creates some huge combos, as 60-100% of the board will always be wild when the icons expand.
Calm Waters
While Legend of the Sea is unlikely to win any awards for its presentation and sound, the slot is certainly not an eyesore – Zeus Gaming just opted to keep the visuals simple and let the bonus features do the talking. It was a decision that paid off too, as both bonus games can be incredibly profitable, meaning you’ll always want to keep playing until you get those all-important free spins.
