The Great Banker

The Great Banker Review

Push Gaming returns to the dapper world of high finance in The Great Banker, an Art Deco-inspired slot that feels like a polished trip to a 1920s metropolis. Visually, the game looks very similar to the predecessor Fat Banker. However, these two releases are more like kissing cousins than siblings. Push Gaming has toned down the volatility, aiming for a mid-level gaming experience with more traditional features. To be clear, there is no growing banker in the bonus round this time.

You can choose from bet levels ranging from €0.10 to €100 per spin, which should satisfy most types of players. The Great Banker plays out on a 5x3 grid, at least in the base game, and you can land winning combinations on up to 20 paylines. Wins are formed from the leftmost reel to the right, and Wild symbols can appear on all 5 reels to help complete wins by substituting for regular pay symbols. The pay symbols, consisting of the banker’s wife, their dog, his top hat, his cigar, and royals, award 0.8x to 10x your stake for 5 of a kind wins.

The Great Banker Slot - Reels Screen

The Great Banker himself can appear on the rightmost reel as a collector symbol, collecting coin prize symbols worth up to 90x your stake. Coin symbols are themselves collected by the Wheel above the grid, and this can randomly trigger the Wheel feature. This feature can award jackpots, double jackpots, or different versions of the hold and win bonus round. The bonus round can also trigger the usual way, via scatters, but there are no bonus buy features in The Great Banker slot.

The more scatter symbols you trigger the bonus round with, the more locked rows are unlocked from the start of the feature. You can benefit from up to 7 rows at the most, and rows are also unlocked during the bonus round. Different banker symbols collect cash and jackpot coins, and these can be boosted by multiplier symbols. The Great Banker max win is 10,317x your stake, and this is a medium volatile game that scores 2 out of 5 on Push Gaming’s scale. It comes with 3 different RTP settings of 96.31%, 94.21%, and 85.34%, so be sure to check before you play for real money.

The Great Banker Features

The time has come to cover the features of this game in more detail, and we also encourage you to test The Great Banker free play demo at the top of this page if you haven’t already. It’s a great way to get familiar with the features, and you can head up there after reading our full review and verdict below.

Coin Collect Feature

Coin symbols land with prize values ranging from 0.1x to 90x your stake, but the coins are only collected and paid if you also land the Banker collector symbol. The Banker can appear on reel 5, while the coins can land on reels 1 to 4. Each instance of the Banker collector symbol collects all coin prizes in view, and you can land up to 3 Banker collector symbols on the same spin.

Wheel Feature

All Coin symbols that land in the base game are collected by the Wheel above the reels. This collection may randomly trigger the Wheel Feature, awarding a spin on the Wheel to win one of the following prizes:

• The Mini, Minor, Major, or Mega jackpots of 10x, 50x, 250x, or 1,000x your stake.
• An x2 jackpot that doubles the jackpot value: 20x, 100x, 500x, or 2,000x your stake.
• 3, 4, or 5 scatters that trigger the free spins bonus round.
• The Great Banker Bonus Round with a guaranteed Great Banker symbol.
• The Fat Money Bonus Round featuring Coin symbols worth at least 5x your stake.

Free Spins Bonus Round

The Bonus Round triggers organically when you land 3, 4, or 5 scatter symbols on the same base game spin. The number of triggering scatters determines the size of the grid, with 4 or 5 scatters unlocking a 5x4 or 5x5 grid, respectively. You start with 3 free spins either way, and the free spins counter resets to 3 each time you land at least one coin or jackpot symbol.

Only blanks, Coins, Jackpot Coins, Banker Collectors, The Great Banker Collectors, Multiplier symbols, The Great Multiplier symbols, or Safe symbols will appear during the bonus round. Here is an overview of what you can expect from these special symbols:

• Banker - collects coins, jackpots, and Banker values from adjacent positions.
• The Great Banker - same as the regular Banker, but collects all values in view.
• Multiplier - boosts coins, jackpots, and banker symbols by x2, x3, or x4 in adjacent positions.
• The Great Multiplier - does the same as the regular Multiplier, but for all values in view.
• Safe - awards a retrigger of the bonus round when you hit 3 consecutive blanks-only free spins, starting from the initial state.

Symbols on locked rows do not count until the rows are unlocked. However, coins and jackpot symbols that land on the locked rows are collected into the Locked Row Meter. This meter is filled when 4 coins and/or jackpot symbols have been collected, which unlocks a row. You can unlock rows until you get a 5x7 grid, which is the maximum number of rows you can get.

The Great Banker Slot - Free Spins

Theme & Graphics

The Great Banker takes you to the cartoon version of Wall Street, or at least a similar-looking financial district with tall buildings towering on either side. The backdrop is more or less identical to what you may remember from Fat Banker, and day shifts to night when the bonus round triggers. The symbols are also recognizable if you’ve played the predecessor, including the fat (or great) banker himself, as well as his wife and their dog. You’ll spin the reels accompanied by a jazzy soundtrack, and visually, the biggest difference is the bonus wheel atop the grid.

The Great Banker Free Play

We recommend that you try the free The Great Banker demo game, located at the top of this review page. This is your chance to see the features in action, and you will also get a sense of how often the bonus round comes along if you play enough rounds. Reading about the game is one thing, but you will never know for sure unless you try it yourself. Once your The Great Banker free play session is over, you can head to one of our casinos listed below the demo game, as these are all confirmed to carry this title.

Pros and Cons of The Great Banker

Our Verdict

The Great Banker is another Action release from Push Gaming, which means it’s likely to disappoint players who anticipated a bigger and bolder version of Fat Banker. The brute force volatility of the predecessor is long gone here, and this release is clearly aimed at casual players looking for a feature-rich game centered around coin collection and hold and win style bonus rounds. It’s all polished and well-packaged, but feels like a fast-food meal more than a gourmet-style dish.

The slick Art Deco elegance of the theme may appeal to some players, but in my view, it reflects the superficiality of this game perfectly. Tying The Great Banker to a masterpiece like Fat Banker does the original game no favors, and it feels like an attempt to capitalize on its success without offering anything truly original or new. The fact that the visuals are almost identical only underscores this notion and makes The Great Banker slot come across as a cheap shelf-filler release more than anything.

Whenever I see a wheel above the grid, it’s like a big red flag waving in my mind. I have never played a slot game with such a wheel that I truly and fully enjoyed. Sure, these games, The Great Banker included, have their moments, and The Great Banker is far from the worst I’ve tried in this category. It’s just that I don’t like the whole idea of a wheel determining my destiny like this. I would rather have more frequent bonus rounds than wheel jackpots.

Anyway, the bonus round in The Great Banker is a rather tedious affair most of the time, with the banker symbols collecting prizes and rows unlocking. The pace is sluggish unless you hammer the spin button to skip animations, and you need jackpot coins to truly make a dent. You don’t get the sense that Push Gaming has poured a lot of thought into this release, and we don’t see The Great Banker making a big splash. While it’s far from Push Gaming at their best, it’s still a decent release. It’s just that the association makes it small rather than great in comparison.