Once Again Upon a Time Slot Review

Once Again Upon a Time drops you into a picture-book kingdom of green hills and a distant blue-roofed castle, and it is one of the more feature-loaded Betsoft releases in a while. This is the sequel to the studio's Once Upon a Time, and where a lot of coin-collect slots give you one trick, this one hands you two full bonus rounds plus a stack of jackpots.

The setup is standard enough: 5 reels, 3 rows, 25 fixed paylines, a bet from €0.25 up to €30. What lifts it above the crowd is everything bolted on around that base. A Free Spins mode, a Hold & Win, a random feature that can fire on any spin, a Mystery Bonus, and five fixed jackpots topped by a Grand worth 10,000x. The max win sits at 12,285x, so the ceiling is high.

RTP is a healthy 96.30% (dropping to 96.11% on the minimum setting). Volatility isn't published, but the way the base game plays and the size of that top prize, it feels high.

The art is bright, warm storybook fantasy, and it looks the part. The reels sit inside grey stone columns wound with green ivy, framed against rolling meadows, a little arched stone bridge over a stream, and a cobblestone path winding up to a turreted castle on the right. A treasure chest spilling gold coins sits beside the reels. It is sunny, colourful and pleasant, and honestly a relief after the hundredth Egypt or dragon slot.

Symbol-wise, the premiums are the characters: a mustachioed knight in plate armour who plays it half for laughs, a blonde maiden in a blue gown and white veil, golden shields and a sword. The royals are gem-cut A, K, Q and J letters in ruby red, amethyst purple, sapphire blue and emerald green. The castle itself is the Scatter, and gold coins stamped with cash values do the heavy lifting in the bonus. Betsoft's chunky 3D style suits the whole thing. Nothing groundbreaking in the modelling, but it is clean and cheerful.

The base game is thin, and there's no dressing that up. Line pays are small, the top character only returns about 12x for five, and long runs go by with the reels just ticking over while you wait for something to break. That is the trade for the high variance, and it means most sessions come and go without ever sniffing that 12,285x number.

But the wait is more bearable here than in a lot of high-vol slots, because there are so many ways for a spin to turn. Six coins can drop for the Hold & Win, three castles can open the free spins, or Fairy Tale Loot can just fire on its own. When one lands, the tone flips completely, from flat to genuinely busy. For my money it's a game you either settle in and grind toward the bonuses, or you skip the middle and buy in.

This is one of the richer, higher-ceiling games in Betsoft's recent run, and the feature list backs that up. Two complete bonus rounds, a random in-play trigger, a Mystery Bonus that can hand over a jackpot, five jackpots and a 12,285x top prize add up to far more depth than the average coin slot. The 96.30% RTP is good and the fairy-tale look is a pleasant change of scenery.

The honest caveat is that under the new paint it's the same engine as Gold Nugget Rush and its siblings, so anyone who's played those will find nothing mechanically new here, and the high variance means a lot of quiet spins between the good stuff. Take it for what it is - a well-stocked, high-potential slot with a cheerful theme - and it's one of the stronger picks of the batch.