Gladiator Legends Slot Review

We started reviewing Hacksaw Gaming products in January 2021 when we looked at their Chaos Crew game, which remains one of the company’s most massive successes in its short four-year history. Originally a developer of scratch card games, Hacksaw has made quite the name for itself in the slot realm by releasing innovative spinners with a specific visual feel and a unique vibe.

Gladiator Legends is a new high variance slot from Hacksaw that debuted on March 24th, 2022, at exclusive casinos and then got a wide release on April 7th. It fits in a section of this provider’s dark-side category, as it is a departure from their usual light fare. It instantly climbed up to the top one hundred rankings following its debut and has managed to stay there in most markets. Below, we examine the appeal of this game, providing you with our opinion if it is one to play or skip.

Theme & Design

The theme here is the armed combatants that risked life and limb to entertain ancient Rome’s coliseum’s audiences. They offered spectators a look into fighting skills, martial ethics, or dying well, earning the crowd’s admiration with their exploits. Gladiators have been the subject of many famous movies, including Ben-Hur, Spartacus, and Gladiator. It is these big-screen spectacles that introduced most of the world to gladiators. However, Hacksaw Gladiator Legends seems to draw its inspiration from the movie 300, which retells the story of the Battle of Thermopylae in the Persian Wars, and not any of the films we mentioned or others that focus on Gladiators.

Presentation-wise, Gladiator Legends has a Nero’s Fortune look mixed with some Barbarian Fury energy. But again, the main inspiration from it seems to be the Frank Miller comic book 300, as it is heavy on reds, and the overall painterly visual style is not exactly but somewhat reminiscent of this graphic novel. Note that this is a 2D game, with some modest animations akin to gifs and a decent movie-like soundtrack. There is nothing overly exciting about the Gladiator Legends’ presentation, but it’s passable, even though it gets a bit monotonous.

The button configuration here is the standard one that Hacksaw always uses. The spin, auto-spin, and bet-adjuster options are on the right side of your screen, while the settings and Bonus Buy feature are on the left.

Specs & Gameplay

As mentioned, Gladiator Legends is a high variance slot. Its default RTP is 94.44%. Yet, this spec ranges and can go up to 96.31% at some operators and as low as 88.19% at others. The game utilizes ten paylines, a base 5×4 grid, and a list with a max win potential of x10,000. The bet sizes here range from $0.1 to $100, and the hit frequency is 26. Wins here happen when you land three to five identical matching symbols on one of the ten predefined paylines.

The low-paying symbols here are 10-A royals in a Roman font. These pay prizes worth x0.5 to x1 your stake. The high-paying tokens are different weapons that pay x5 to x30 your bet. A growling lion is the Wild in this slot, replacing all other pay symbols and paying out a win of x30 your wager for five lions landing on the grid on a single spin. A VS. symbol activates the Duel Reel feature in Gladiator Legends, and a combatant acts like the Arena Scatter, while a bear is the Beast one. Multiplier coins play specific roles in this slot’s bonus rounds.

Bonus Features

A VS. symbol appearing on the grid during the base game will trigger the Duel Reel mode. It expands the corresponding reel into an entire Wild when a winning combo can get formed. In the base game, this mode can activate with or without multipliers in play. When it has multipliers at the bottom and top of a Wild, a gladiator does an offensive move deciding which one will get used. The multipliers here go up to x100. If more than one Duel Reel forms on a winning line, the winning multipliers will get totaled before being applied to this combination.

Gladiator Legends’ two main bonus features are the Unleash the Beast round and the Champions of the Arena feature. You can activate the first by landing three bear Scatters on a spin and the second by hitting three gladiator/Arena ones. The Champions of the Arena mode begins with three free spins, and this round implements blank symbol positions, VS. symbols, plus normal and epic coins. Whenever a coin or VS. tokens land in this mode, the spin counter resets, and this round ends if you go winless for three spins. Pay attention to the reel multipliers on top of each reel here, as these can go up to x1,000. Each winning one gets stored at the top of its respective reel. VS. symbol trigger duels here as well. Note that any following VS. token hitting on a reel will take the stored reel multiplier in a battle with a randomly selected multiplier. Then the winning party will replace the stored multiplier. That means that there is a chance that you may lose a higher multiplier to a lower one in this duel. Normal coins in this mode will increase the active multiplier (reel) by its value, while the epic ones will multiply every current reel multiplier. Both can reveal multipliers up to x10.

Unleash the Beast mode also starts with three free spins, has dead symbols, and the multiplier values here go up to x500. In this round, reel multipliers only appear on the first, second, fourth, and fifth reel, and they accumulate the values of the duel multipliers featured on their corresponding columns. The middle reel gets locked in place for the duration of this feature, so it will not spin. It gets called the Beast Reel and will only get unlocked when a VS. token hits at least once on the other four reels. It also has a special Beast Duel with a multiplier that multiplies the other reels’ duel multipliers. Of course, before adding them to the reel ones.

We know that all this sounds somewhat convoluted in text. Thus, we suggest playing the game to see these mechanisms in action. You will figure out how they work in minutes. We promise.

You can buy your way into the Champions of the Arena mode for x100 your stake, while the Unleash the Beast round will cost you x400.

GOSU Verdict

Exciting. At first glance, to us, Gladiator Legends did not seem like much of a spinner. Nonetheless, we were wrong to doubt Hacksaw Gaming, as they have rarely let us down in the past. It is a slot that will take you on a relentless reel-spinning ride. It is similar to Warrior Ways, which we also reviewed. That is positive, as we gave that game our seal of approval too. Also, the max win cap of this product is pretty decent, so there is a lot to love here. We recommend Gladiator Legends, but newbies should be wary that it may take them a minute to figure out how the bonus rounds work in this title. Therefore, do not get discouraged if that happens to you as well. You’ll get the hang of things in no time.

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