Eastern Fury

Eastern Fury Review

Eastern Fury plunges you directly into the dark, chaotic heart of a Yakuza turf war, and Pragmatic Play serves up unusually grotesque and violently realistic visuals for this release. The tense, cinematic atmosphere is framed like ‘found footage’ from a camcorder, where a blood-splattered hideout serves as the backdrop to the ruthlessly high-stakes operation. A menacing, golden-pistol-toting mobster is your companion in this game, ready to lead you astray on a path of mayhem and hopefully some massive scores.

Eastern Fury plays out on a 5x5 grid with 15 paylines. You win by landing matching symbols across these paylines, starting from the leftmost reel. The 5 premium symbols consist of different mean-looking Yakuza characters. Judging from their looks, they’re ranging from bosses to regular street thugs. These characters pay between 2.5x and 10x your stake for 5 of a kind wins. The lower-value symbols consist of different animal clan logos, awarding between 0.5x and 1x your stake for 5 on a payline.

Eastern Fury Reels Screen

The ‘Wild Wild East’ Wild symbol can appear on any reel, substituting for pay symbols to help complete wins. Wilds pay the same as the top character symbols should you land a win with only wilds involved. In addition, you can land a VS Expanding Wild symbol on reel 5, and these expand to fill reels before a Yakuza duel animation plays out. This duel determines the expanding wild multiplier, which can go as high as x100. Respins add new expanding wilds to reel 4 and then reel 3 if you don’t win, and respins continue after that until you win.

That’s the base game in a nutshell for you, and Eastern Fury features 2 bonus round tiers. The regular bonus round comes with sticky expanding multiplier wilds that can appear on reels 5 to 1 in that order. In the super bonus round, all sticky expanding wilds are guaranteed a minimum multiplier of x10. Eastern Fury is a medium volatility slot, scoring 3 out of 5 on Pragmatic’s scale. The game features RTP settings of 96.53%, 95.49%, or 94.53% (depending on the operator), bet levels ranging from £0.20 to £240, a hit rate of 23.75%, a bonus round hit rate of 1 in 289 spins, and a max win of 10,000x your stake.

Eastern Fury Features

Before we go into all the details of the feature department, we would like to encourage you to test the Eastern Fury free play demo after finishing the review. This is your opportunity to get first-hand experience with the game and the features, and you’ll find the demo at the top of this page. Let’s go!

Expanding Multiplier Wild Respins

Expanding Wild symbols expand to cover entire reels after they land, substituting for any pay symbol to help complete wins. Like regular Wild symbols, Expanding Wilds pay the same as the highest-value character symbol if you land a pure Wild win. A shootout between rival gang members plays out on the Expanding Wild symbol, adding a random multiplier of x2 to x100 to the Expanding Wild. Expanding Wilds may only land on the rightmost reel on a base game spin.

If the Expanded Wild does not lead to a win, a Respin is awarded with the Expanding Wild sticky on reel 5. If the respin does not lead to a win either, a new Expanding Wild lands on reel 4, awarding yet another respin. If this respin does not lead to a win, you get an Expanding Wild on reel 3 as well, with the 2 remaining reels respinning until a win is delivered. The Expanding Wild multipliers are added together before boosting wins passing through them.

Free Spins Bonus & Super Bonus Rounds

The Bonus Round triggers when you land 3, 4, or 5 duel pistol scatter symbols in view on the same base game spin, awarding 10, 15, or 20 free spins, respectively. If one of the scatters is a golden duel pistol super scatter, you trigger the Super Bonus Round with the same amount of spins awarded depending on the total number of scatter symbols present. Only one super scatter symbol may land at the same time. Neither of the bonus rounds can be retriggered, and you cannot win additional free spins.

The Expanding Wilds do not trigger respins in the bonus round. Instead, they remain sticky for the duration of the feature, and the first Expanding Wild can only appear on reel 5. Then, any additional sticky Expanding Wilds will appear on reels 4, 3, 2, and 1, in that order. The Expanding Wild multipliers assigned from the initial shootout do not change and boost all wins passing through the wilds for each new free spin. In the Super Bonus Round, Expanding Wild multipliers range from x10 to x100.

Eastern Fury Free Spins Win Screen

Special Bets & Buy Feature (not UK)

The Eastern Fury slot features separate Special Bets and Buy Feature menus, something that seems to be the new standard for Pragmatic Play games. Here’s an overview of what you can purchase in this game:

• Ante Bet - pay 5x your stake to boost your bonus round chances by 11x.
• Super Spin 1 - pay 20x your stake to get an Expanding Wild on reel 5.
• Super Spin 2 - pay 300x your stake to get an Expanding Wild on reel 5 with a minimum multiplier of x10. In both Super Spins, you can get Expanding Wilds until reel 2 via respins, but you cannot trigger the bonus round.
• FS Bonus Round - pay 100x your stake to get 3 to 5 triggering scatters with the possibility of a super scatter.
• FS Super Bonus Round - pay 500x your stake to get 3 to 5 triggering scatters with a super scatter guaranteed.

Theme & Graphics

Eastern Fury takes you into the gritty underworld of organized crime in the Far East, where rival gangs are warring against each other in bloody feuds. The backdrop looks like a blood-splattered crime scene, complete with discarded handguns, bullets, and half-eaten noodles on the table. The whole scene is framed by a camcorder interface, and the heavily inked gangbanger flanking the reels is hardly camera-shy. He looks proud of whatever massacre has just played out, enjoying a cigarette while showing off his golden pistols. More dubious characters are found on the reels, together with the logos of the different Yakuza clans.

Eastern Fury Free Play

You may want to dip your toes in the high-stakes criminal waters before braving real-money blood feuds at a casino. This is why we recommend you check the free Eastern Fury demo, located at the top of this page. Thanks to the elaborate feature and bonus buy menus, you can easily and quickly sample the expanding wilds respins feature and both the regular and super bonus rounds. You can also get a sense of the game’s volatility and hit rate as you spin along in the base game, as hands-on experience is always better than stats alone. Anyway, when you feel that the Eastern Fury free play session has given you the answers you need, casinos carrying this title are found below the demo game.

Pros and Cons of Eastern Fury

Our Verdict

First of all, it’s nice to see an Asian-themed slot from Pragmatic Play that does not involve the usual tranquil settings, harmonious architecture, and red-and-gold-infused visuals. Eastern Fury delivers a cold, neon-drenched dip into the ruthless East Asian underworld, and it immediately reminded me of Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises starring Viggo Mortensen, although that movie does not take you as Far East as this game. Still, the subject matter is less than pleasant, and the almost photo-realistic presentation creates a frightening atmosphere.

The somewhat understated soundtrack makes you feel as though something nasty is brewing in the aftermath of whatever violence has already happened in the backdrop, exploding into hefty shootouts or sword fights on the expanding wilds. The expanding multiplier wild system is the primary engine driving the action in Eastern Fury, and it’s admittedly an original twist on an otherwise familiar feature. The VS duel animations are well-executed and varied, involving different characters and weapons, and the outcome is a guaranteed win.

However, it’s important to note that you are only guaranteed a win of any kind once the expanding multiplier wild respins start. This means that the expanding multiplier wilds do not have to be involved in the win, as any win stops the respins feature in its tracks. That being said, the feature is still clever. The more expanding wilds that are added from right to left, the larger the combined multiplier becomes while also increasing the chances of the wilds being involved to boost your win. If the expanding wilds reach reel 3, they are guaranteed to be involved in any win.

Up to an x300 wild multiplier boosting base game wins is hard to complain about, making Eastern Fury a well-balanced experience that can deliver substantial payouts in all stages. The expanding wilds turn sticky in the bonus round, where it’s possible to fill the entire screen with multiplier wilds for insane back-to-back payouts. The super bonus round comes with a significantly higher price tag, indicating its value, but it doesn’t seem to come along all that often in our experience. Overall, Eastern Fury is a hard-hitting release that pulls no punches and is well worth a closer look.