The Ultimate 5 Slot Review, Demo Play, Payout, Free Spins & Bonuses

The Ultimate 5 Review

Pragmatic Play is currently holding both the number one spot, as well as third place, in the popular Safari genre, at least according to our SlotRank system. The African animal theme is clearly something they know well, but The Ultimate 5 does not add very much in terms of visuals. However, there are some minor tweaks to the somewhat standard features that might interest a certain crowd.

The Hold & Spin Super Boost round is the main attraction, and it’s all about linking adjacent money symbols together in groups to upgrade the value of all symbols involved. Taking this all the way transforms all 15 symbols to 500x Mega Jackpot symbols, but the max win is still capped at 5,000x your stake. The regular bonus round comes with random royal symbols removal, and you can win up to 2,000x from a single free spin.

The Ultimate 5 Slot - Reels Screen

The Ultimate 5 Slot Features

The 5 African animal symbols pay between 4 to 20 x your stake for 5 of a kind wins, but you win 100x your stake if all 5 animals land in any order on the same payline. The savannah tree in the sunset Wild steps in for all regular pay symbols to help complete winning combos, but it cannot complete the 100x all-animal win. The wild pays the same as the top-tier Lion symbol.

The Bonus Round triggers when you land 3, 4 or 5 Diamond scatters anywhere in view, and this gives you an upfront scatter win of 5, 25 or 50 x your stake, respectively, before you receive 8, 10 or 12 free spins.

A symbol removal feature triggers at random times, and you can thus remove up to all 5 low-paying symbols for the duration of the feature if it triggers 5 times. Each removal upgrade awards a wild, and you win 2, 4, 6 or 8 extra spins when you land 2, 3, 4 or 5 small diamond overlay symbols at the same time.

The Hold & Spin Super Boost feature triggers when you land a Money Sun symbol on reels 2, 3 and 4 (they cannot land on reels 1 and 5 in the base game), and the triggering symbols become locked in the center of the 3 middle reels on a new and cleared grid no matter where they landed. The Money Symbols come with random values between 1-8x and 10x your stake, and they can also land with Mini, Minor, Major, Maxi or Mega jackpot prizes worth 25x, 50x, 75x, 100x or 500x your stake, respectively.

The Hold & Spin feature starts you out with 3 respins, and the tally resets for each new non-blank symbol you lock in place on the grid. Adjacent symbols link to form a group on the grid, just like the triggering symbols did, and each new addition to the group increases the value of all symbols in the group. As an example, x8 turns into x10, while x10 turns into the Mini Jackpot, and so forth.

Only linked symbols pay when the feature ends, and filling the grid boosts all present symbols to the Mega Jackpot level. This awards the hard-capped 5,000x max win.

The 200 Spins The Ultimate 5 Slot Experience

You get a small taste of the base game grind, before we trigger the free spins round at 0:43 into the 3:23-minute highlights video. You get to see the Hold & Spin Super Boost feature right after, and simply hit the play button below if you’re curious about how we fared in our 200 spins test session.

Review Summary

Sometimes subtle changes to well-known features is enough to tip the scales and take a game in a new and exciting direction, and this is sort of the case in Pragmatic Play’s The Ultimate 5. The generic African safari theme gives off a run-of-the-mill first impression that you need to shake off first though, and the random symbol removal bonus round is not really the main attraction here.

Sure, it can dish out decent payouts if you remove all royals from the grid, not least from the 100x all-animal wins that sometimes come along, but don’t expect that one too often. Grouping together sticky symbols in the Hold & Spin feature is more exciting, due to the possibility of turning them all into Major 500x Jackpot symbols. However, it’s a bit lame that you don’t get the full 7,500x payout when it happens, as the hard win cap cuts you off at 5,000x your stake.

Pros

• All 5 animal symbols pay 100x in all orders
• FS w/ random low-pay symbol removal
• Hold & Spin w/ linking symbols value upgrade
• Win up to 5,000x your stake

Cons

• Beware of customizable RTP ranges
• Max win should have been 7,500x

If you appreciate The Ultimate 5 Slot you should also try:

Great Rhino - is Pragmatic Play’s smash hit in the African safari-themed genre, and it plays out on 5x3 reels with 20 paylines. The Super Respins hold-and-win style feature is the main attraction, together with the bonus round, and you can land jackpots up to 500x your stake in this medium volatile release.

Animals of Africa - is a Gold Coin Studios (Microgaming) release in the safari-genre, and it comes with 5x3 reels and 20 paylines. The base game offers a high-value wild symbol only, while you’ll benefit from expanding wild respins in the bonus round.

This can lead to 8,000x your stake payouts.

Serengeti Gold - is an African safari installment in Just For The Win’s HyperHold series, and it comes with 5x3 reels and 25 paylines. The hold-and-win style HyperHold Respins round comes with jackpots up to 2,500x your stake, and the up to x5 multipliers in the bonus round can also crack the 2,500x win cap.

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