RJ

Scorio is too stupid

Revisado: 04-21-25

Just for reference, I made it to the end of chapter 69. I have about 4 hours left out of nearly 40. There might be a great story in there somewhere. But to date, this is the longest book in this series by FAR and it's 40 hours of torture. Scorio gets beaten time after time. It's like that old song: I get knocked down, but I get up again. That's literally the entire 34 hours up to this point. He makes plans, makes progress, then gets slapped down from one of two sources. 1. His enemies. 2. His own GOD DAMN RETARDED DECISIONS. OVER. AND OVER. I'm walking away without finishing. One review said near the end it gets better. But I'll never find out.

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Boring

Revisado: 03-18-25

Well written for the most part yet trite and predictable. There are mundane humans, and humans with the "gift". If you have a common gift you're basically just a cultivator with extra strength and speed. Only people with an uncommon gift can actually do anything "magical" but the rules are murky and undefined. I made it to near the end of book 2 and just lost all interest. Narrato

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Almost but not quite

Revisado: 02-10-25

I enjoyed the majority of this first book, if you'd asked me at the halfway point whether I'd continue the series I'd have said yes. But I'm one hour from the end now and the MC, Will, is beyond getting on my nerves. He's nieve, ignorant, moralistic, thinks he knows best, and so damn soft.

And his attraction to the lead female is utterly forced and based almost entirely on how attractive she is (which is fine, attraction is important, but it's literally the entire basis of it all). He knows absolutely nothing about her and he's falling head over heels.

He goes from killing without batting an eye one battle to hemming and hawing about the brutality the next battle. Leaving enemies alive, enemies who would not hesitate to kill you? Great way to find a knife in your back. I think I'm walking away from this series, in fact I might not even finish this book. All because of the MC. I like the battle maniac alien Vorvak way more, at least he's consistent.

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Artifical drama

Revisado: 12-26-24

This entire series has been propelled in large part by artificial drama. I've finally had enough. I'm DNFing this book and returning the next. What do I mean by artifical drama? I'll give an example. The character on the cover, Mindwitch, has an extremely deadly pet snake that lives as a 2D skin tattoo until it wants to manifest as 3D. Instead of simply telling the MC about the existence of this pet, she casually reveals the tattoo, which the MC instantly recognized, amidst a crowded room full of people it could kill easily. The MC jolts into "alert" mode and is about to rip her arm off (where the snake tattoo is currently residing) because it was the LEAST AWFUL course of action. Then he gets berated for his reaction. Instead of simply telling him about it, or revealing it to him alone, she casually walks a deadly creature into his presence with zero heads up and then rolls her eyes at his reaction. I am so godamn done with this dumb shit.

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MC too beta

Revisado: 12-12-24

MC let's Silver lead him around on a leash and is virtually incapable of standing up for himself. He regenerates from any injury, except when she cut his balls off and put them in her purse for safe keeping. She lies to him, manipulates him, and keeps secrets, and despite all this he can't stay angry at her or do more than make token grumbles that she laughs off. His entire harem thinks they know what's best for him and gang up so it's two, three or even four against one. MC comes across like a beta cuck. Now, there ARE mitigating reasons for some of this behavior, but it goes so far past "acceptable" with zero repercussions that I'm getting upset reading. I'll be dropping this and returning books 4 and 5.

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MC is annoying

Revisado: 11-21-24

I think I'm quitting just an hour into book 2, and that's after almost quitting near the end of book 1. The MC suffers from Jason Asano syndrome, continuing to drop pop culture references despite knowing NOBODY WILL UNDERSTAND. He has zero control over his emotions and literally goes catatonic at the worst times. He berates and yells at the ONLY alien trying to keep him and humanity alive! He slaughters a hundred foes then has a sudden morality problem and gives up the blatant advantage because reasons. He thinks steam engines have something to do with pistons but can't describe more than that?! What kind of third world education did this guy receive?! The powers are random, poorly explained, thoroughly unexplored and uninspired. We're NEVER told how the stats work. Strength and Agility are fairly straightforward, but how would the completely neglected Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma and Luck stats effect the MC? We never get even a cursory explanation and the MC NEVER EVEN ASKS. NEVER! Narrators do a great job but nothing can salvage this. Wasted credit.

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I tried, I really did...

Revisado: 08-06-22

Let me preface this review by saying I'm partway through book two, and I'm stopping out of sheer frustration. Also, I capitalize the game lingo to set it apart. You can hit something, but there is also a Hit stat in the game. You can be an assassin in the real world, or the class Assassin in the game, etc.

I'm a gamer, and I've been a gamer for 30+ years. My first RPG was Final Fantasy on the NES. I've excelled at some games, even made a few online leaderboards, but usually I'm just average, so I occasionally enjoy these power fantasy stories about exceptional people excelling.

The MC of this book, if you are to believe his backstory, swept onto the VR gaming scene about three years ago and wiped the floor with the entire world. He beat the best of the best, by an order of magnitude, then vanished. Now, I get the sense he didn't play these games because he's a gamer (he had legit reasons though), and his real life combat experience (among other things I won't spoil) lent itself towards his roaring success. So ask yourself...do you get to the absolute top of the food chain, even if you aren't gaming for enjoyment, without learning quite literally everything there is to know about gaming? No. You do not.

This isn't a spoiler. The MC is a trained assassin IRL. When he very first creates his character, he is told to select a class that most closely resonates with your skills or at the very least, your desired way to play. The IRL assassin chooses Warrior...despite having the option of Assassin. I can forgive this, because he intends to solo mostly and while Assassins can kill well, Warriors are typically sturdier and a little more versatile. We'll let this slide.

He is given a set number of SP (Skill Points, even though they don't go towards SKILLS, they go towards STATS) and he allocates them evenly. 5 Strength, 5 Dexterity, 5 Intelligence and so on. As a baseline, going into a game nobody knows the rules of, this is actually intelligent. He then checks his stats page and sees he has a 5% Hit chance, and muses that perhaps Dexterity directly affects your ability to hit things (as it often does in RPG environments). Proceeds to put literally EVERY, SINGLE, POINT he obtains from then on into Strength. And misses so often that 10% of the book is the word 'miss' repeated ad nauseum. He even gets super frustrated by how often he misses. The most common word in the English language is 'The'. There are more 'miss' than 'the' in the book.

Then, we literally never touch on this subject again. He stays at 5% Hit the entire book. He even meets somebody with 100 Dexterity who has 100% Hit chance. Hmm, coincidence? He has a NPC companion who is intimately familiar with the game world, and he never asks her how to increase his Hit chance. For non-gamers reading this (if there are any) it isn't an opinion, it is a fact. You get your Hit chance to 100% or higher asap, almost without exception. It doesn't matter if you're firing .50 caliber bullets, if you can't hit your target all that power is utterly wasted.

Spoiler! Do NOT read on if you hate even small spoilers.

In book 2, he receives an upgrade. He is, in plain English, with zero ambiguity, told that each point of Dexterity will now increase his Hit chance 10% (so with 5 Dexterity he has 50%). He is handed 100 Skill points in the same sentence. All he had to do was allocate 5 more to Dexterity and he would be at 100% Hit. Barring some skills or hidden stats, he would never miss again.

Nope. All 100 into Strength without a second thought. This is where I'm stopping. But wait, there's more! His NPC companion is curious about his in-game 'screens'. He exclaims something to the effect of 'you've never seen an in-game announcement before?' to which she replies no. Then there is a verbal game-wide announcement which she can hear, and exclaims it sounds like a godess, but not one she's met. He asks 'you've never heard an in-game announcement before?'

Then he faces an enemy duo, and has their abilities displayed before him. One of the abilities is that when one of the two reaches 50% health or lower, the other will instantly heal them to full. It is stated at least twice that he has utterly perfect recall. Proceeds to fight these two for an HOUR, gets one of them to 50%, and it gets healed, undoing all the hard work he put in. He acts surprised and mildly agitated.

His ultra powerful game-breaking weapon looks like trash at first. It is weaker than his beginner weapon, and it has 'bonded' to him, preventing him from disposing of it or using any other weapon, ever. Proceeds to rant for a solid several minutes. However, there is a caveat. It can gain experience and grow with him. He reads this, and any real gamer would have instantly latched onto it, but nope, he's miserable and hates his life. Has to have the fact it can gain XP and grow pointed out to him. No gamer with perfect recall would have missed this.

This is just the tip of the 'elite gamer who should know all this but somehow doesn't because it propels the story with idiocy instead of intelligence' iceberg. I could go on, but I won't. If you are a gamer, and a stickler for the details, I can't recommend this book. The MC is a very talented elite gamer with glaring holes in his gamer knowledge that would only be excusable if he was brand new to gaming. Avoid.

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I tried, I really did...

Revisado: 08-06-22

Let me preface this review by saying I'm partway through book two, and I'm stopping out of sheer frustration. Also, I capitalize the game lingo to set it apart. You can hit something, but there is also a Hit stat in the game. You can be an assassin in the real world, or the class Assassin in the game, etc.

I'm a gamer, and I've been a gamer for 30+ years. My first RPG was Final Fantasy on the NES. I've excelled at some games, even made a few online leaderboards, but usually I'm just average, so I occasionally enjoy these power fantasy stories about exceptional people excelling.

The MC of this book, if you are to believe his backstory, swept onto the VR gaming scene about three years ago and wiped the floor with the entire world. He beat the best of the best, by an order of magnitude, then vanished. Now, I get the sense he didn't play these games because he's a gamer (he had legit reasons though), and his real life combat experience (among other things I won't spoil) lent itself towards his roaring success. So ask yourself...do you get to the absolute top of the food chain, even if you aren't gaming for enjoyment, without learning quite literally everything there is to know about gaming? No. You do not.

This isn't a spoiler. The MC is a trained assassin IRL. When he very first creates his character, he is told to select a class that most closely resonates with your skills or at the very least, your desired way to play. The IRL assassin chooses Warrior...despite having the option of Assassin. I can forgive this, because he intends to solo mostly and while Assassins can kill well, Warriors are typically sturdier and a little more versatile. We'll let this slide.

He is given a set number of SP (Skill Points, even though they don't go towards SKILLS, they go towards STATS) and he allocates them evenly. 5 Strength, 5 Dexterity, 5 Intelligence and so on. As a baseline, going into a game nobody knows the rules of, this is actually intelligent. He then checks his stats page and sees he has a 5% Hit chance, and muses that perhaps Dexterity directly affects your ability to hit things (as it often does in RPG environments). Proceeds to put literally EVERY, SINGLE, POINT he obtains from then on into Strength. And misses so often that 10% of the book is the word 'miss' repeated ad nauseum. He even gets super frustrated by how often he misses. The most common word in the English language is 'The'. There are more 'miss' than 'the' in the book.

Then, we literally never touch on this subject again. He stays at 5% Hit the entire book. He even meets somebody with 100 Dexterity who has 100% Hit chance. Hmm, coincidence? He has a NPC companion who is intimately familiar with the game world, and he never asks her how to increase his Hit chance. For non-gamers reading this (if there are any) it isn't an opinion, it is a fact. You get your Hit chance to 100% or higher asap, almost without exception. It doesn't matter if you're firing .50 caliber bullets, if you can't hit your target all that power is utterly wasted.

Spoiler! Do NOT read on if you hate even small spoilers.

In book 2, he receives an upgrade. He is, in plain English, with zero ambiguity, told that each point of Dexterity will now increase his Hit chance 10% (so with 5 Dexterity he has 50%). He is handed 100 Skill points in the same sentence. All he had to do was allocate 5 more to Dexterity and he would be at 100% Hit. Barring some skills or hidden stats, he would never miss again.

Nope. All 100 into Strength without a second thought. This is where I'm stopping. But wait, there's more! His NPC companion is curious about his in-game 'screens'. He exclaims something to the effect of 'you've never seen an in-game announcement before?' to which she replies no. Then there is a verbal game-wide announcement which she can hear, and exclaims it sounds like a godess, but not one she's met. He asks 'you've never heard an in-game announcement before?'

Then he faces an enemy duo, and has their abilities displayed before him. One of the abilities is that when one of the two reaches 50% health or lower, the other will instantly heal them to full. It is stated at least twice that he has utterly perfect recall. Proceeds to fight these two for an HOUR, gets one of them to 50%, and it gets healed, undoing all the hard work he put in. He acts surprised and mildly agitated.

His ultra powerful game-breaking weapon looks like trash at first. It is weaker than his beginner weapon, and it has 'bonded' to him, preventing him from disposing of it or using any other weapon, ever. Proceeds to rant for a solid several minutes. However, there is a caveat. It can gain experience and grow with him. He reads this, and any real gamer would have instantly latched onto it, but nope, he's miserable and hates his life. Has to have the fact it can gain XP and grow pointed out to him. No gamer with perfect recall would have missed this.

This is just the tip of the 'elite gamer who should know all this but somehow doesn't because it propels the story with idiocy instead of intelligence' iceberg. I could go on, but I won't. If you are a gamer, and a stickler for the details, I can't recommend this book. The MC is a very talented elite gamer with glaring holes in his gamer knowledge that would only be excusable if he was brand new to gaming. Avoid.

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

Started strong...

Revisado: 11-11-21

I had high hopes for this series based on the first half of the first book. A fun isekai in the same vein as Mushoku Tensei. Reborn with adult memories into a newborn, providing an immense boost to his ability to learn and grow. By the end of the first book, and from that point on, however, the story goes utterly 2D. All supporting characters are simply there to advance the plot. Conversation is stilted and unnatural. The MC is not a complete idiot (I can't stand when 'authors' use stupid MC's or highly improbable misunderstandings to cause drama to advance the plot, and that really isn't the case here..... Much) but for having nearly 40 years of experience by this point he still does some incredibly stupid things. For example, how does a college educated person not immediately wonder 'gee, if I wreath my body in flame, what will happen to my clothes?' Lol, flame on! Oops, I'm naked in front of no less than six women now, having my less than fully developed bits openly mocked by my future wives. Seriously.

Any one of these issues could be overlooked by itself, but all combined leaves this feeling hollow and unfocused. An undercooked power fantasy.

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These two 'heroes'...

Revisado: 06-05-21

I've made it this far, but it's getting kind of painful. Jason and Henry are like the two extreme sides of a single person, but since they're separate people they aren't balanced.

Hazy spoilers ahead:

Jason, for having such a 'dark' side and being so 'intelligent' is frequently way too squeamish and dumbfounded. He's been on a horror planet, murdering monsters and people, for like an entire year. But he can't keep the shock off his face when the truth of our origins comes out, and starts getting upset when a truly, TRULY evil woman has her clothes cut off. How do you go from murdering dozens of people to suddenly 'is this REALLY necessary?' when it's literally the ONLY way to save the life of a team member? I want to reach through time and space to slap the $#!+ out of him.

And Henry? No class, no patience, complete 'idgaf' attitude, but he accepts basically everything from the mundane to the truly shocking with aplomb.

It's like their detractors are magnified to create drama. If you drew a ven diagram of the two, the tiny little overlap in the middle would create a single, well rounded individual. I'm going to get the next book, but I'm getting fed up with these two. They seem to get more powerful and intelligent at killing by the hour, but they learn everything else at a glacial pace.

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