Pantasia Review

Pantasia is a Rival-powered virtual casino set within a fantasy world. Almost every single day a different world awaits inside the casino lobby - whether it be a mystical ice world, a stormy sea scape or a tropical island hideaway. This ever-changing theme is certainly original and intrigued me enough to investigate further. Thankfully though this theme isn't carried on within the games themselves (something that annoys me after a time!) and as such I decided to see what else the mystical world of Pantasia had to offer. The fact that Pantasia still accepts US players also made me curious as to what this US-friendly casino had in store!

Rival software has not been around for that long - around a year or two at the time of writing. However, during that time the software has generated a lot of positive response from online players. The games designed by Rival are elegant and sleek and with some uniquely designed games thrown in to the mix (e.g. I-slots) it's easy to understand the attraction.

As with all Rival-powered casinos, to play at Pantasia a gambler must firstly download the software - no web-based version of the casino exists. However, with the casino installation file being just under 8mb in size the installation process should not be problematic for the majority of people. Similarly, the casino only needs to be downloaded and installed once so even players on slower connections should have no problems playing at the casino from the second time onwards.

Whilst I have played at Rival-powered casinos before, Pantasia was a new one for me and so the first job I had to do was create a user account. As with the vast majority of casinos, Pantasia allows players to create an account within minutes with a simple-to-use form being used to capture a new player's personal details. A nice touch is that only one account is needed for both guest and real play and that a player is able to use these accounts interchangeably. I find nothing more annoying than casinos that don't allow you to play as a guest again once a real account has been created! Of course, the real fun of gambling is had in winning and so the next stop for me was the casino cashier.

Pantasia accepts a wide range of deposit options including credit card as well as e-wallets such as NeTeller and EcoCard. I chose to deposit $100 via NeTeller, although with a minimum deposit requirement of just $20 low-rollers could well find themselves at home at Pantasia. A great feature of this casino is the promotions interface where all a player's available promotions are listed. With each promotion detailing the bonus amount and attached wagering conditions, it's really easy to see what free money is available. Although I personally opted not to claim a bonus (apart from a great $7 no-deposit offer), with a massive 100% bonus worth $777 available on sign-up and over $900 of monthly promotions on offer I can see that bonus hunters could well become regulars at this casino!

Now that my account had been successfully funded the next stop was to check out the available games. Pantasia makes picking a game easy with the sleek lobby offering the available games via a menu system. Menu-driven systems are pretty much standard now in the casino world, but I still like casinos that have made play as simple as possible for the player.

When playing at casinos I tend to move round the games based on their type - for example I may start with table games before moving on to slots or video poker games. However, with Pantasia I decided to simply move around games at random. Having said that I still started my play at the Blackjack table - always a popular game for punters! Specifically I played the single spot game, although a multi-hand game (allowing maximum bets of $100 on three spots) is available. With just $1 minimums I would guess that most players would be satisfied with the betting range at Pantasia, although perhaps very high rollers may be put off.

In terms of game presentation, it soon became clear that Pantasia have worked hard with the software designers to ensure their games are simple to play yet have a sophisticated elegance about them. The graphics utilised are of a very high quality and animation is very smooth. With user-configurable game speed a player is able to set any game to play exactly as they want and the additional sound effects enhance further the entertainment factor of gambling at this casino.

Sadly, my luck wasn't up to much on the Blackjack table so I next jumped over to the Future Fortunes slot game. This is a video slot and is relatively new - this addition makes a total of around 15 different video slot games available at Pantasia. The thing that caught my attention with this game was the free spin bonus round - when activated the first line of reels are guaranteed to be wild meaning every one of the 5 free spins will pay an amount to the winner! Sadly I wasn't able to activate this bonus round during my play but I did get a nice $50 winner.

I decided to stick with the slots after my reasonable success at Future Fortunes and headed over to the 'As the Reels Turn' I-slot. When Rival launched their I-slot range they really were something new for the online world - basically as a player spins the reels and hits certain triggers, a story is told complete with animation and sound. This is a great concept and although the range of I-slots is not huge, it can be really tempting to keep spinning the reels if only to hear the rest of the story! The I-slot games also contain some great bonus games - for example the Pick a Chip game on the I-slot I played was great fun, particularly since it rewarded me with a 1600 coin win!

I did check out some of the other slots available at Pantasia and discovered a nice set of three-reel games along with the video slots already mentioned. However, I decided next I'd try some of the Video Poker games available. Specifically I settled down for some 10-hand Jacks or Better play. A nice feature at Pantasia is that all the Video Poker games can be played over 1, 4, 10 or 25 hands which will definitely be a boon for the VP player. I can certainly understand the attraction, particularly when I was dealt three Queens on my Jacks or Better game. Sadly I only converted one hand to the magic 4-of-a-Kind hand but a $29 return on my $5 was certainly pleasing!

Sadly despite doing well on quite a few of the Pantasia games, others really did for me and I found myself with nothing left to withdraw on this occasion. However, on a subsequent session I actually turned a free $7 chip in to $140 so still have experience of the withdrawal process at this casino. Around 24 hours after withdrawing the funds from my account the transaction moved from being reversible to being processed, and a further 24 hours after that saw the money sent to my NeTeller account. 2-3 business days for cash processing is certainly acceptable in my book so definitely no problems here.

When it comes to customer support at Pantasia, help is available 24 hours a day via email, telephone, by post and live chat. Telephone support is only toll free for US residents, although an internationally-charged number is provided for others worldside, and of course the live chat facility allows free, instant support for every player. I tested the live support by asking for my account to be closed (once my withdrawal had been completed) and 'Don' courteously and efficiently responded to my request. As with banking, certainly nothing negative to report with Pantasia's customer support.

In conclusion I have to say I was impressed with Pantasia. The theme is original and it's actually quite exciting not really knowing what wonders might be present in the lobby each time you log-in. Of course, a good casino needs more than a theme and thankfully Pantasia also performs well here with a good variety of high quality games available. My withdrawal was efficiently processed and support also met my demanding standards. Certainly there are no major issues with Pantasia. I guess you could ask for more games or perhaps a better slot selection. However, generally Pantasia strikes me as a good casino to play at and with a free no-deposit bonus available, certainly one any fan of online gambling should try out!

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