The Lord of the Rings

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring™ is a 5-reel online slot game featuring animations, images, and characters from the hit movie. With 243 ways to win, free spins feature with a random wild reel, stacked wild symbols and The Eye of Sauron expanding wild feature, this game is sure to please your eyes and your pocketbook!

Or so I thought, until I tried it for myself. It appears to be a very high variance slot, meaning decent wins are very hard to come by, but when they do it’s cashout time. After trying this slot a few times, I found it ate through my money quite fast, but I will go back and try it once in a while hoping to catch it at a time when it’s feeling generous.

The paytable is very weak in my (and many others) opinion, I think if you hit 5 of a kind of anything (even on a 243-way slot) you should get at least your bet back, but on this slot 5 tens returns less than your bet. You get excited to see some stacked wilds lining up during your spin, only to be disappointed in the end result since the only time you can get a decent win is by lining up 5 of a kinds with several wilds on the screen.

Free spins are triggered when three or more scattered rings land on the reels during a spin. You are awarded 15 free spins with a random wild reel on every spin, and three or more rings retriggers the feature. Even though the free spins bonus features a random wild reel on each spin, there should be a multiplier for those free spins like many other slots have. Having a multiplier in free spins would make up for the weak paytable, but since the highest possible win on this slot is already so high I guess they decided against it.

Some people have had good luck with this slot, but many others are not pleased with this highly hyped and anticipated slot from MicroGaming.

The Lord of the Rings online slot game utilizes Cinematic Spins™ – which allows movie clips to act as moving backgrounds behind the reels during spins. Win sequences and expanding wilds also make use of cinematic clips, instead of traditional animated graphics. I found that I liked the movie clips playing in the background, some people find them distracting, I think it is definitely a good looking game.

Update: Finally hit a decent win for the bet size. Free spins hit two big 5 of a kind spins, one with Frodo, and I ended up with $68 from a 30 cent bet. See the screenshot below.

Screenshots (click to enlarge)