A third Olympus that changes the door and leaves the room alone
I read Gates of Olympus Super Scatter as one good idea fixed to the front of an engine that was finished two games earlier. The idea is an instant prize paid when a natural base-game trigger holds Super Scatter symbols: 100× for one, 500× for two, 5,000× for three and the whole 50,000× cap for four. The trouble is where the idea sits. Neither bonus purchase can reach it, and the free spins behind it run on the inherited structure. Underneath, the base game returns 95.5% at one casino setting and 94.52% at another, which is low for a game this volatile. That makes this a competent sequel rather than a strong one.
The original Gates of Olympus established the frame: a 6×5 grid where eight to 30 matching symbols pay anywhere, tumbles that repeat until the grid produces no new win, and multiplier orbs summed and applied to the win of the sequence. Gates of Olympus 1000, the sequel before this one, kept the setting and reworked the multiplier and maximum-win profile. Super Scatter pulls a different lever and changes the entrance to the bonus instead. That makes it a late arrival to its own format, and I judge it on one question: does the new symbol earn a separate game?
The prize ladder is pegged to the buy menu
The ladder climbs in uneven steps. Going from one Super Scatter to two multiplies the prize by five, and each of the next two symbols multiplies it by ten, so the fourth rung is 500 times the first.
The bottom two rungs are the better piece of design. A trigger holding one Super Scatter has paid 100×, exactly the price of the Free Spins Buy, before its first free spin. Two Super Scatters pay 500×, exactly the price of the Super Free Spins Buy. A natural bonus with a Super Scatter in it arrives already paid for at the menu's own rates, and I take that as the clearest statement of what the new symbol is for.
The cap shapes the top of the ladder. The 50,000× maximum is a stop condition rather than a display, and the entry prize counts toward the round, so the four-symbol award leaves nothing for 15 free spins to add and the round ends at the door. Lower rungs leave room: after a 5,000× prize the free spins have 45,000× of headroom, and after a 100× prize they have 49,900×. The door is not the only way to the cap, though. Orbs reach 500× each, so a single top orb over a 100× tumble sequence reaches 50,000× in either phase, and in free spins the running total can climb past 500× as orbs accumulate.
Buying the bonus buys the original
Here the idea and the menu collide. Both purchases build their trigger from four, five or six regular Scatter symbols, and Super Scatter cannot land once free spins begin. A bought round therefore holds no Super Scatter at any stage: no entry prize, no paid-for start, no door to the cap. Retriggers change nothing, since they come from three or more regular Scatters and add five spins. Buying skips the mechanic this edition is named for.
The Ante Bet pulls the other way. Where it is offered, it raises the stake from 20 units to 30 and adds Scatter and Super Scatter symbols to the reels, which raises the chance of a natural trigger and of a prize at the door. It also disables Feature Buy while it is active. The two routes into the bonus exclude each other: the setting that feeds the new symbol closes the menu, and the menu shuts out the new symbol. I read that as a deliberate split, and a costly one for anyone who reaches bonuses through the buy button.
The Super buy multiplies the price and leaves the ceiling where it was
The Super Free Spins Buy costs 500×, five times the standard buy, and sets every orb in its round to at least 10×. The floor rises by the same factor as the price, from 2× to 10×. Six of the fifteen orb values sit below that floor, 2× through 8×. Nothing in the purchase moves the 500× top orb or the 50,000× cap.
Measured as best case against cost, the standard buy can return 500 times its price before the stop ends the round. The Super buy can return 100 times its price. Paying five times more cuts the best-case multiple by five.
The return does not compensate. At the 95.5% setting the Super buy also returns 95.5%, level with the base game, while the standard buy returns 95.51%. At the 94.52% setting both purchases return 94.49%, below the base game. One Super buy has an expected cost of 22.5× the stake at the higher setting and about 27.6× at the lower, against roughly 4.5× and 5.5× for the standard buy. A 10× floor lifts every orb that joins a winning tumble, and it does nothing for a free spin that fails to win. I would not pay 500× for a round with the same ceiling as the 100× one and a return no better than it.
Thin returns make the variance expensive
The base game returns 95.5% at one casino setting and 94.52% at another. Those are house edges of 4.5% and 5.48%. The 94.52% setting keeps about 22% more of each stake than the 95.5% setting of the same game, a gap of nearly a full point. A high-volatility game with a 50,000× stop keeps much of its return in rare results, and a 5.48% edge on top of that is steep. The 95.5% figure is low as well.
The Ante Bet does not repair it. At the 94.52% setting it returns 94.47%, below the base game. At the 95.5% setting it returns 95.54%, a sliver above the base game, but the percentage hides the cost: 4.46% of a 30-unit stake is about 1.34 units of expected loss per spin, against 0.9 units on the 20-unit stake. At the 94.52% setting the same comparison runs about 1.66 units against 1.10. At both settings the Ante Bet adds roughly half again to the expected cost of each spin, in exchange for more Super Scatter chances.
A game for base-game spinners, not for buyers
The case for this edition rests on natural triggers. A player who spins the base game and wants the Olympus bonus with the chance of a paid entrance gets the one thing this edition adds to the original structure, at a return that depends heavily on the operator, so the rules screen is worth checking first. A player who reaches bonuses through the buy menu gets the inherited structure at 95.51% or less, and has no reason to choose this edition over its predecessors on the strength of a symbol the purchase removes. The Super buy is the weakest option in the game: five times the price, the same ceiling, no better return. One good idea placed where the menu cannot touch it, over an engine running on thin returns, is what holds this game to competent.
