Northern Lights Casino Review

A relatively new online gambling destination designed exclusively with UK-based customers in mind, Northern Lights Casino aims to bring players a complete gaming experience on desktop and mobile.

Powered exclusively by the Nektan casino platform, Northern Lights Casino nevertheless features integrated software from NetEnt, Microgaming and NextGen Gaming, meaning it is able to offer a diverse range of slot machines and table games to ensure players of all preferences are catered for.

Licensed by the governments of Gibraltar and the United Kingdom, Northern Lights Casino currently only accepts players residing within the UK – and this fact is reflected in a number of British-themed titles among its gaming portfolio. Though this means the site is not suitable for players from Europe or beyond, those in the UK will certainly benefit from a safe and Anglo-centric gaming experience.

Indeed, with the UKGC imposing some of the strictest licensing restrictions of any regulatory body, players can enjoy Northern Lights Casino safe in the knowledge that both their personal and financial details will be treated with the utmost confidence for greater peace of mind.

Best of the Best

While the full line-up of titles at Northern Lights Casino is perhaps not quite as comprehensive as at some of the bigger multi-national casinos, what the site has done incredibly well is cherry-picking the very best titles from their range of software providers.

This means players will only find the best of the best in Northern Lights Casino’s various gaming lobbies, with the site’s portfolio of slots being one particularly eye-catching example. Here, players will discover 127 different games from NetEnt, Microgaming and NextGen Gaming, with only the most popular games from each software provider being deemed worthy of a place in the line-up.

With recent smash hits like Aloha! Cluster Pays, Jimi Hendrix and Theme Park: Tickets Of Fortune all present and correct, players will also find highlights such as Koi Princess, Drive: Multiplier Mayhem and Guns N’ Roses among the NetEnt collection. Microgaming’s offering, meanwhile, includes the popular Avalon series and Break Da Bank, while NextGen Gaming supplies titles such as Witch Pickings and Gorilla Go Wild to ensure players have a great range of slot options to choose from.

Beyond video and classic slot titles, Northern Lights Casino also features a small casino section where players can choose from five main options. These come in the form of Blackjack, Multi-Hand Blackjack, Baccarat, Roulette and a live version of Roulette Extreme, meaning that all of the major table game bases are covered without it being a line-up that particularly caters for casino specialists.

Unfortunately, beyond these aforementioned options, there’s little at Northern Lights Casino to catch the eye. Primarily a specialist site for video slots, the casino falls down due to a lack of jackpot titles and the table game offering should be filed under “basic” – and that’s if we’re being generous.

This fact is compounded by some fairly static lobbies that don’t feature any filters to help players chop away at the list of games, while the lack of even a simple search function means that all titles have to be located manually. All in all, this means that Northern Lights Casino is not the most user-friendly site in existence, but the small selection of games can at least be skimmed through quickly.

Lighting the Way

While all of the desktop games at Northern Lights Casino are download-free and available for instant play, customers will be delighted to discover that increased portability and touch-screen functionality can be found when using the mobile site. With a wide range of titles being accessible from any HTML5-enabled device including iPhone, iPad, Android smartphone and tablet, Northern Lights Casino provides a balanced and engaging online mobile slots that are perfect for gaming on the go.

To get started, players simply need to plug the site’s URL into their mobile browser or enter their phone number at the desktop site to receive a special link that will walk them through signing-up.

Relic of the Past

Given that Northern Lights Casino is a relatively new site, it is somewhat puzzling that they only recently added Neteller as a payment processing option. Indeed, a lack of eWallet support is a shocking omission in this day and age, but for tech-savvy players, Neteller is the only option for securing the fastest deposit/withdrawal times. Beyond that, players will be reliant on card options including Visa, Visa Electron and Mastercard for their withdrawals, with these methods usually taking 2-3 days to process. Equally surprisingly, direct bank transfer is not supported by the casino.

Try before You Buy

At Northern Lights Casino, players will be given the chance to test out some of the slot machines and table games without depositing any of their own money thanks to a £5 registration bonus. Just for opening an account at the site, players will instantly be credited with their bonus and can use it as they see fit across Northern Lights Casino’s full range of games.

If they enjoy the experience, they’ll then benefit to up to £500 in match bonuses spread across their first three deposits, with 200% up to £50 on their first transaction, 100% up to £200 on their second and 50% up to £250 on their third. This offer is further supplemented by an ongoing 100% match bonus available to players each week.

Stone Age Support

Although Northern Lights Casino advertises a dedicated 24/7 customer support service, like a lot of things on the site, this facility is not entirely what it seems. Yes, the site can be reached at any hour of the day or night, but if you want an instant response you’ll have to rely solely on a toll-free UK phone number.

This option aside, players can also reach Northern Lights Casino by direct email and expect a response by the next business day, but the lack of any sort of 24/7 live help service means that, much like the site’s payment processing options, the full support service is fairly prehistoric.

Bad at the Basics

As you can probably tell by the tone of our review, this Nektan-powered casino is more Northern Rock than Northern Lights. Although the slot offering is decent enough to hold some players’ attentions and the welcome bonuses are just the right side of passable, Northern Lights Casino fails in some shockingly basic areas including table games, payment processing and customer support.

While we really wanted to support a site that is dedicated to UK-based players, the truth is Northern Lights Casino simply doesn’t deliver in the same way that other regionally-specific sites – particularly some of the excellent choices in Finland and Norway – have done over the past few years. While we could tolerate a slightly smaller selection of games if the upside was a fantastic user experience, this is not the case at Northern Lights Casino and most players will feel that there simply aren’t enough options available to justify the poor all-round service. All in all, a hugely disappointing performance.