Chinese New Year 2

Chinese New Year 2 Review

Get ready for an upgraded celebration of the Chinese New Year in Fa Chai Gaming’s anticipated follow-up, simply called Chinese New Year 2. Once again, you get to indulge in this yearly festival together with the cheerful dragon above the reels. The sun is setting behind the temple courtyard, and the time has come to light up the fireworks and go for the big wins.

The Chinese New Year 2 slot plays out on a 5x3 grid with 243 ways to win, just like the original game. You win by landing matching symbols on at least 3 adjacent reels, starting from the leftmost reel, and the premium symbols are envelopes, gold ingots, fish, and a pineapple of gold as the top-tier symbol. These pay between 4.16x and 16.6x your stake for 5 of a kind wins, while the royal symbols award between 2.3x and 3.3x your stake for the same.

Chinese New Year 2 Slot - Reels Screen

The Chinese dragon Wild symbol substitutes for any pay symbol to help complete or improve wins, but cannot substitute for scatters. Eligible players can activate the Extra Bet to double the bonus round hit rate, or purchase the feature directly via the Bonus Buy menu. This Extra Bet feature was not available in the original game, and the bonus round has changed a bit as well. It still triggers from landing 5 firework scatters across all reels, but this time, you get a choice menu.

Instead of being assigned a random win multiplier for your free spins, you can choose a starting win multiplier between x2 and x18, but the higher multiplier you go for, the fewer free spins you get. The good news is that retriggers award both extra spins and a multiplier upgrade, for possible payouts of up to 16,800x your stake. The 96.5 % RTP is a bit higher than in the first game, and the volatility has increased from medium-high to plain high in the Chinese New Year 2 slot.

Chinese New Year 2 Features

There aren’t too many features to cover in Chinese New Year 2 Fa Chai Gaming, but eligible players can take advantage of the Extra Bet feature to double the bonus round hit rate. Below, we’ll take a closer look at what this game has to offer, making everything crystal clear for you before you make your choice to play for real money.

Extra Bet (not UK)

Eligible players can choose to pay 1.5x the regular stake per spin via the Extra Bet feature. This doubles your bonus round chances, although the hit rate stats are not disclosed with or without this ante bet feature active.

Chinese New Year 2 Free Spins

The Bonus Round triggers when you land the firecracker scatter symbol on all 5 reels in the base game, giving you a choice of 5 different versions of the free spins round. Here’s an overview:

• 18 free spins with an x2 starting win multiplier.
• 13 free spins with an x3 starting win multiplier.
• 8 free spins with an x6 starting win multiplier.
• 5 free spins with an x9 starting win multiplier.
• 3 free spins with an x18 starting win multiplier.

You can retrigger the bonus round the same way, by landing 5 firecracker scatters spread across all 5 reels on the same free spin. This upgrades the win multiplier while also awarding the same number of extra spins you got initially. You can win up to 100 extra free spins via retriggers, and here is an overview of the maximum achievable win multiplier for each bonus round version:

• The x2 starting win multiplier bonus round can be upgraded to x8.
• The x3 starting win multiplier bonus round can be upgraded to x12.
• The x6 starting win multiplier bonus round can be upgraded to x24.
• The x9 starting win multiplier bonus round can be upgraded to x36.
• The x18 starting win multiplier bonus round can be upgraded to x72.

Chinese New Year 2 Slot - Free Spins

Chinese New Year 2 Bonus Buy (not UK)

The bonus buy feature is available in certain jurisdictions, allowing eligible players to purchase the feature directly for 50x the stake. This guarantees 5 triggering scatters on the spin that follows, and you can then choose your preferred bonus round version from the choice screen.

Theme & Graphics

The Chinese New Year 2 game boasts classic Asian-style festive visuals, not unlike what you got in the original game. The cheerful Chinese dragon now finds himself outside in the courtyard of the temple instead of inside, still doing its antics with piles of gold ingots in the foreground. A stunning sunset is on display in the background, as this firecracker of a game is ready to explode when you hit that spin button. On the reels, you’ll find typical Oriental symbols, and the soundtrack is a simple Chinese melody, creating a joyful atmosphere.

Pros and Cons of Chinese New Year 2

Our Verdict

If you’ve already celebrated the Chinese New Year with Fa Chai Gaming’s first installment, there isn’t all that much new to discover in this follow-up. Chinese New Year 2’s mobile-first approach has a strong appeal in the target market, which is Asia, and the Chinese festive dragon is still doing its thing above the reels, albeit against a different backdrop. The symbols are similar as well, and so is the overall feel and vibe of the gameplay.

However, the Chinese New Year 2 slot includes an ante bet feature, which some players will probably appreciate since it shortens the time between bonus round triggers significantly. Simply calling the game Chinese New Year 2 makes it feel a bit too generic, at least in my view, and the game would’ve benefited from a more lively subtitle like “Year of the Dragon,” or at least something with a bit more schwoong than a simple number.

Anyway, the base game keeps you going with some wild symbol action here and there, but the main attraction is the bonus round, just like before. Unlike in the original Chinese New Year slot, where a random multiplier was assigned based on the number of triggering scatters, you get to choose your destiny in Chinese New Year 2. You can go for plenty of free spins with a lower starting multiplier, or risk it all with only 3 starting free spins with an x18 multiplier boost lined up for each win.

I like that you can upgrade the win multiplier via retriggers, which makes the feature all the more exciting and unpredictable. However, I think the best strategy is a golden middle way approach, which can really benefit you if you land a couple of retriggers to upgrade the multiplier. While Chinese New Year 2 is a more volatile game overall, the bonus round choice allows you to manage the risk, and the max win has been dialed up to a solid 16,800x this time. All in all, Chinese New Year 2 is the best choice if you’re wondering which of the two games to play.