Data Dragon Danika
by gusdefrog
After a great deal of preparation, Danika begins her new digital dragon's life in a very small way.
They say the "Living Jade Empire" creates individualized quests. They say it can read your mind. They say you can find your heart's desire. They say that there's never been a game like it, and they're right but… they're also wrong.
The game is a data mine, built to retell the old tales that humans have been telling each other since language was invented. It doesn't read your mind, but it reads your search history, your favorites, and your blogs. The "Living Jade Empire" is literally crafted from fables, legends, fantasies, and maybe just a bit of stardust.
But in the end, will the game be able to figure out what Danika wants most? Will the desires of other players take priority? Or, will playing it change her, until she desires what it can give her?
A journey is always made up of many small steps, and this game has still only just begun.
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A cute odyssey of side-quests
A VRMMO story of small proportions. There's a great war going on... somewhere, there's a desperate battle between the titans of PVP the next valley over, but meanwhile..... here's Danika. She's entered this virtual space as a tiny dragon, and she's determined to boldly go where none have gone before.
It's a cozy read, give it a go and you won't regret it!
Small adventures in a large world.
This is VRMMO story with a fresh twist to the usual trope.
The small size of the MC makes things so much different, it really shows what a tiny character in a VRMMO can do, and how they interact with being far smaller than everyone else. The focus of this story is on the MC just having her adventures in the game.
The way of how the VR game is built, is just unique, its a living world of legends, yet it also behaves like a actual game more than even most of the VRMMO stories i have read on this site.
Good writing, its easy to read, noticed only some small mistakes which usually get noticed and fixed.
Im interested in just how the story will develop, there are just so many possiblities there.
Try to read the small details, they hint at stuff that will happen later on in the story.
(By the way, there are some sidestories posted on the patreon of the author and on webnovel, they are as enjoyable to read as the rest of the novel.)
My advice is, go read it, its a relaxing read and pretty unique.
Love it!
I'm having a great time reading this story. It's cute and funny with good characters and a fascinating virtual world full of interesting quirks and fun little twists. I especially like the messenger animal mechanic.
This is not a hack and slash heavy action conquer one mountain only to discover it was just a foot hill kind of VRMMO story. This is a slice of life story about the trials and tribulations of a 20 something girl discovering a new game with friends and romance, good times and bad.
One thing that I like about this story is that it's not all set in the virtual world. Too many VRMMO stories talk about the "real" world at the beginning and then never mention it again even though the main character can't possibly spend all their time in it. The main character has real world problems and interacts with some of the other characters in both environments.
So far (start of book 4) there is no overarching evil or nemesis plaguing the story trying to inject heavy drama or urgency into it. That’s not to say there's no drama or sad and happy moments, but the ones so far have all been the everyday kind of situations that we all can face.
I don't usually like stories that switch up the POV, but each time the author does it here it works really well. It can make me rethink earlier actions as seen from the alternate POV and gives good insight the personality of that character. The same is true for the side stories, which are mostly from another characters POV. Those side stories seems to me to give great color and depth to the world.
Bottom line, this is a go to guilty pleasure that never fails to entertain.
What is slice of life
(written in the 3rd book)
I am not generally a slice of life fan. I am following many stories on this site, and just about every one of them has a pretty grand plot driving it forwards. Despite that, DDD relentlessly demands attention. The author has built a fascinating game world, and has delivered on several interesting personalities to explore the potential and boundaries of that world. There is also romance and emotional moments building up the characters and relationships as the story develops.
As a daily release, this story seems designed to give you a smile and a giggle once a day, then move on.
Done Well
The world building is excellent. The environment the author has created as a world for their characters is interesting and diverse. It will also leave you disappointed with every other MMO though so... You've been warned.
The character interactions are well done too. As a slice of life story, this is an important one. There is joy in watching how each character reacts to the situations thrown their way by the author.
Good Enough
The characters. This is actually something that has been improving in the third book, but newer readers progressing through the earlier books might be put off by it (if it isn't just me). The main character Danika is a bit of an unreliable narrator. When the POV follows her (as it does most of the time) she doesn't do a good job of representing her own emotions, and sometimes even the emotions of others. This has the unfortunate side effect of making the characters sometimes seem flat in situations that should be emotionally charged. As time has gone on, this has improved, especially with more alt-POV chapters that are being released in the thrid book. There is a lot of depth to the emotions and reactions of Danika that have been missed in the earlier books that is very evident in these scenes.
The Things I Don't Like
As someone who generally doesn't follow slice of life stories, I find myself wondering sometimes where the story is going. What is the grand plot. Where is the big bad. This... isn't a problem if you enjoy slice of life type stories. I'm generally not bothered by it either. I didn't take points off for this because it is never implied that there is anything more to the story than just growing as a person and in relationships.
Should You Read It?
The core question of any review!
Do you like slice of life? Then yes, read it.
Do you usually not read slice of life, instead preferring some of the more action oriented stories available here? Well, I would recommend giving the story a chance. It offers a nice daily break from the high velocity, high impact stories you usually read here, and should give you a good laugh and smile once a day.
For once, an enjoyable VRMMO!
I don't usually like VRMMO stories, they're often far too destructive with more emphasis placed on the game system than on the characters. Not so with this one, the focus is on character development and the MC isn't a psychopath. I look forward to reading the continuing adventures of Danika.
The prose is simple but effective, and you'll only be dissapointed by the grammar if you're particulary picky.
Adorable
Tl;dr it's a cute, feel good read that will put a smile on your face.
It's an adorable read about Danika playing as a tiny dragon in a mmo. Feels very slice of life in style and the plot lines so far are small quests, but are interesting to read still.
No issues with grammar and lifelike interactions with characters.
Looking forward to more chapters :-D
Neat Slice of Life
Pretty fun Slice of Life. Character and game elements are well used and the System stuff is as sensible as it is robust. No regrets burning through this on a slow workday.
Two dings in my opinion:
1) The 'romance' on the male side (for the most part) feels a bit... 'yikes'. Their dynamics seem unbalanced, but it might be because it reminds me of another story which was a horror/romance that specifically played into/explored power dynamics. In a slice of life, the same mannerism feels unsettling, even if its only a vague similarity.
2) The 'classes' of the game are split into three broad 'paths'- Magic, Physical, Crafting- which seem to have sub-class 'paths'. The character has been adamant about refusing any paths so they could learn everything. But all their time has basically been on magic stuff. Basically nothing relating to crafting, and off the top of my head their one physical-pathy skill is arguably an innate-type since its a claw attack. After 800ish pages (as of this review) that seems like a weird character beat whenever it crops up since its never truely used except as an excuse to make things super inconvinient for her to learn things (but she has a special way of learning things anyway...) It was also a bit frustrating, since with the equipment size issues I was kind of expecting her to get tailoring or some kind of adorable tiny jewelry-smithing (which would effectively be blacksmithing/armorsmithing due to her size) so she could have equipment.
Dragons
This is a LitRPG story with a dragon MC, what more do you want to know!?!?!?
review as of chp 54
This is a slice of life VRMMORPG tale. Not a human MC (dragon, yay!), not an OP MC (didn't I say dragon? How is that not OP?) and all in all a very low key story, except for the cuteness factor :-)
Tropes are turned upside down behind every corner, very refreshing!
Yes, there're wars and OP high level (beta) players, but Danika isn't interested in the former and didn't play the beta, so no OPness for her. But she may be interested in one of the latter so fair warning, romance may be ahead! (extremely low key though and not for the first few dozen chapters - whether that's a pro or a con depends on you, give it a try either way ;-) )
What I especially like is that this is a game. Danika plays for fun, not to earn the cost for her [enter heartrending story here], she's not blackmailed to win XYZ or her little sister get's it, there's no evil AI/hacker/corporation that wants to take over first the game, then the world.
It's just a game and we can all enjoy it with Danika, we're not supposed to enjoy her struggles as she plays because she's forced to do so, like so many other LitRPGs out there.
The writing is pretty close to perfect. Typos, mixed up words and left-overs from editing are pretty much eradicated.
The story itself is great. Aside from lots of cute, there's actual stuff happening, quite a difficult feat in a slice of life environment! True, it's often kinda meandering but there are lots of quests that actually advance the world as well, besides all the slices of life we get to see. Being a miniature dragon is sure exhausting^^
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Just had to reread after the big reveal in the 50th (which was very anticlimactic and calm despite me categorizing it as 'big reveal' and no, I won't tell you what I'm talking about, read yourselves :p) and suddenly everything just jumped out at me. Nice setup!
Good story so far.
If you dislike MMO, game playing, cute animals doing human things, and lighthearted humor this story is not for you. The start of the story is not extremely original with Danika entering a new game and the ensuing shenanigans. It then tells a tale of a cute animal and her struggles to do human things. As long as the story does not take a dark turn, it seems like a good read.