3 Lucky Lion

3 Lucky Lion Review

Jili Games keeps churning out new installments in their popular TriLuck series, and 3 Lucky Lion invites you to celebrate the Chinese New Year with fireworks and fanfare. The charming festival creatures are sitting above the 5x3 reels, in what looks like a traditional part of a Chinese city judging from the classic architecture. You can look forward to a festive atmosphere spiced up by exotic symbols, and the bonus round takes center stage as usual.

However, before we get to that, let’s cover the basics. You start by choosing your bet level between €1 to €1,000 per spin, which should satisfy most types of players. Winning combinations start from the leftmost reel toward the right, with 50 paylines snaking their way across the grid. The premium symbols - consisting of Caishens, red envelopes, cymbals, drums, and lanterns - pay between 1.5x to 3x your stake for 5 of a kind wins.

3 Lucky Lion Slot - Reels Screen

The royal symbols pay all pay 1x your stake for the same, and the Wild symbol awards 4x your stake for 5 on a payline. Of course, the Wild symbol also substitutes for any pay symbol to help complete or improve line wins. That pretty much sums up the base game, as there are no other features than wilds to help you out. The main aim is to trigger the bonus round, preferably with all 3 TriLuck scatters if you can.

This is not an easy feat, but either way, the bonus round triggers randomly when at least one TriLuck scatter is collected. These scatters come in the form of firework rockets, exploding against the drums the 3 Lucky Lion characters are sitting on. They can upgrade to a dual grid, increase the free spins tally, and award multipliers, and your best shot at cracking the 5,000x max win is to roll all 3 into the same bonus round.

3 Lucky Lion Features

The base game is about as barebones as it gets in 3 Lucky Lion Jili Games, but collecting TriLuck scatters will keep you on your toes to see when the bonus round triggers. Below, we’ll explore all the details you need to know about this feature.

3 Lucky Lion Free Spins

Purple, red, and green firework rocket scatters are collected by the corresponding lions above the reels, with each collection potentially triggering the Bonus Round. You can trigger the feature with either one, a combination of two, or all 3 scatters, and each scatter type represents an upgrade you’ll benefit from during the free spins round that follows.

This is a hold and win-type bonus, where you start with 3 free spins, and the tally resets each time you land a coin or jackpot symbol. Here is an overview of the bonus round features you get from the scatter symbols:

• Double Up (purple scatter) - awards an additional reel set with free spins calculated separately.
• Zone Boost (red scatter) - adds random multipliers that can boost coin prizes when they fill a specific multiplier area.
• Extra Spins (green scatter) - increases the number of free spins to 4 for each reset.

The bonus round ends when you run out of free spins by landing enough consecutive spins with only blanks, or if you manage to fill all positions on the grid or grids. All prizes in view are then summed up and paid, and below is an overview of the coin and jackpot symbol values:

• Grand Jackpot - awards 500x your stake.
• Major Jackpot - awards 50x your stake.
• Minor Jackpot - awards 10x your stake.
• Mini Jackpot - awards 5x your stake
• Coin prizes - range from 0.1x to 3x your stake.

Theme & Graphics

With the 3 Lucky Lion characters perched above the reels, this game transports you to a traditional Chinese neighborhood featuring classic architecture illuminated by glowing red lanterns. The festive New Year's atmosphere is amplified by the upbeat soundtrack, inspired by Chinese folk music. The firework rockets hit the drums the lions are sitting on with a satisfying explosion, and the reels are filled with Caishens, red envelopes, lanterns, and other symbols typical for Asian-themed games.

Pros and Cons of 3 Lucky Lion

Our Verdict

Fans of the trademarked TriLuck series know what to expect with each new release, as there isn’t all that much of a difference between each installment. Of course, you get a new theme and a different vibe with each game, and more importantly, the TriLuck bonus round features are mixed up a bit. Some of the features are carried over between installments, but there is usually at least one unique bonus round modifier to look forward to.

My biggest issue with 3 Lucky Lion and other TriLuck installments is the base game. As much as I try to enjoy these games, the base game gets tedious rather quickly. When testing 3 Lucky Lion slot, I burned through what felt like a ton of spins without seeing any significant wins except the occasional top-ups. The game makes a massive deal of a 17x win, for example, calling it a “Mega Win” which kind of feels like an insult.

I’m usually a fan of high-paced gameplay, but in this case, I do not recommend maxing out the turbo feature. Combined with the autoplay function, you can power through 50 spins in what feels like the blink of an eye and you hardly see what’s even happening. Even the lions above the grid start pulsating frantically in super turbo mode, putting you in a manic state that drains your bankroll before you have time to even settle in.

The regular turbo option is optimal, allowing you to enjoy the animations and get a sense of whether you win or lose. This keeps things under control as you cross your fingers for a fully fledged TriLuck bonus round. This happens rarely, of course, and the overall bonus round hit rate seems a bit low, at least in my experience. If you enjoy the TriLuck system and Asian-themed slots, 3 Lucky Lion may be your thing. However, it offers nothing new compared to previous installments.