Romeo and Juliet

It's hard to say how many different films, television shows, plays and other versions of the classic Romeo and Juliet have been done, but Pragmatic Play's slot version just adds another one to the list. This theme has been used so much and is such a part of our culture of storytelling that it's a bit of a challenge to try to use it to craft a game that will stand out in any meaningful way, but that's exactly what they've tried to do here.

For the most part, they have succeeded, but the somewhat sub-par graphics and soundtrack really take away from the overall value of the experience.

Format and Layout

As far as game formats go, Pragmatic Play (formerly known as Topgame), couldn't have picked a format that's more ordinary. With five reels and three rows, this is a 20-payline affair. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but with a theme that's so common, it might have been a good decision to mix things up in terms of game layout.

As far as bet sizes go, players will choose a coin size and the number of coins on each of the 25 paylines. The coins go from the $0.01 level up to $0.50, and you can bet as many as 10 coins on each payline, so the bet sizes start at $0.25 per spin and go up to the high stakes levels.

Top Payouts

The five top paying symbols in the game are based on critical characters and motifs from the play. It starts with the nurse, and she pays out 1,000x for five of a kind. Next up is the priest, and he pays slightly less at the 750x level for five of a kind. These two characters are arguably the most important in the story, other than Romeo and Juliet, because of how they set everything up with the trick they plan to pull to get the lovers out of their problem set up by the feud between their families.

The poison that Romeo drinks is worth 300x for five of a kind, and the dagger that Juliet uses to kill herself is worth 200x when you line up five of them. Finally there is the white rose, and that symbol pays out 100x for five of a kind. Again, all three of these symbols are key to the story as a whole, and while they're stylized in a way that isn't likely to get players excited about what's going on, they at least chose the symbols well.

Low-End Payouts

On the lower end of things, Pragmatic Play didn't get quite as inventive. They have the most generic and boring A, K, Q, J and 10 symbols that are perhaps humanly possible to have. Both the red A and the yellow K symbols pays 60x for five of a kind, which is decent enough of a payout. The 50x win for five of the green Q, blue J or purple 10 is also solid enough to be respectable. While the symbols are boring, which contributes greatly to the massive let-down that is the set of graphics in this game, at least the payouts are good.

Wild Romeo and Juliet, Free Spins

The main feature in the game is developed by the Romeo and Juliet symbols. Romeo shows up on the first reel, and Juliet is on the last reel. When one of them shows up, they'll creep across the reels horizontally one spot at a time, giving players a free spin with a wild symbol each time. If they both show up on the reels at the same time, then when they combine, they'll turn the center reel solid and give the player 25 free spins with the wild center reel held into place.

Our Thoughts

Making a game based on this theme is a tall task because it's so easy for it to come out as just another generic slot (read more) that doesn't stand out. For the most part, this is what happened here. This is unfortunate because the way the wilds work together to give the free spins is pretty cool, and it actually stands out as a feature we haven't seen before. Unfortunately, the normal gameplay is pretty boring since these wild symbols rarely show up, and the graphics don't help the situation.