Before They Came (Magical Apocalypse)

It's too early to say if the plot will grow from where it is, or if the story as a whole will develop beyond being a webnovel.

The premise is familiar, but the powers are interesting. Exploring a new magic and world are definitely the highlights of Before They Came thus far.

The main two shortcomings as of chapter 71 are the lack of supporting character and the MC's reaction to power.

 Overall this is still a short and fun story. Hopefully it continues to grow into a great one.

I enjoy the story and would recommend to others (Currently at chapter 9). My only issue is that he gets really strong really fast and that his knowledge seems to be from nothing but intuition but even that shouldn't allow him to do what he has done. But other than that I saw no grammar or spelling errors and while the chapters are short its fine and not a huge deal.

Great read , weak to strong , but not like a Chinese xianxia where the MC becomes a overpowered psicopatía... strong but limited and with very human issues ... I like it and never get bored. .it does propose several ethical and philosophical plots that could be explored , but the writer has chosen to keep it simple and nice ... love it forgot to mention , female characters need more depth, as well as aliens... seriously I know it will become a bitch but I think you need to start pondering different philosophical issues , I mean , if you are going for the rebuilding civilisation , democracy, monarchy, oligarchy? As for Nature magic , mix a firefly with a plant and you have a light producing plant , also , think Avatar , plant computers , plant brains ,with genetic modification you could creat great bioenergy generators that produce purification , or fire , or I don't know from a scientist point of view .... every great power , from light , darckness, thunder, fire, what're , earth and air and all others are cointained in a single cell , its the atomic version of an ecosistém, a universe and a manufacturing plant .... so flesh has waaay to much to be explored. Nature magic IS all of the magics in the universe , so changing his mindset he could explore other sources of sorcery through his own sources .... well just some ideas, explaining that he is in general not very smart makes up for not doing it so it's all the writers choice .... surrounding characters need more depth. On the topic of the gods and all deux est maccina characters , I like how you have been exploring it . On that thought , freedom of sentient beings create choices, which create consequences, such acomulate and impact others , which in turn make new choices , this creates rivers of consequentials which may be defined as fate if calculated ... so the interaction of a god can be a word of encouragement or discouragement at the right moment , which in turn can change the course of those rivers of consequentials aka fate ... I propose this as a different way to limite the actions of your gods in your story , such as you have been doing with merlin ... just some ideas. I think you are doing great !!!

Reviewing this at chapter 60, here's my opinion:

It's interesting, unique, funny, and has some really awesome moments! As in multiple instances of "crowning moment of awesome"!

Story:

Develops onion-style, peels off layer by layer, with each reveal making the world increasingly fascinating. Includes quite a few tantalising glimpses which I'm so looking forward to the Author developing further!

The plot moves along at a good pace, with some variety to mix things up a bit. Makes for addictive reading, you'll gulp down chapters by the dozen before you know it.

Just a tiny gripe that sometimes, I feel like "whoa, everything's just going your way eh, MC?". But that might just be me, and I agree that it can be tough to avert the perception of convenient coincidences or, ahem, plot armour. And if one tries to explain everything, it would cripple the pacing.

Character:

MC is quite relatable, tons more believable than most others. He's very human, makes mistakes, but also learns from mistakes FAST. Also, has his moments of awesome!

Style:

The conversational style makes for very smooth and easy reading, goes down like... a cold beverage that's both light and tasty. Something you could drink all night.

Grammar:

No grammatical mistakes or typos that I could notice, nothing to jar the reading experience. Done very well, thumbs up!

... one maybe-spoilery detail below...

...

... I really like that the MC plays to his strengths. It's not so much that he's OP, because OP-ness is always relative. Kill an Orc with one blow, get crushed by Godzilla the next minute, for example. It's more that the MC gives the impression of OP-ness through a combination of D&D Wizard-level preparation (or striving for it, which I like), playing to his strengths, and manipulating the battle or battlefield like someone who's studied Sun Tzu. So amazing, so much enjoyment from reading it.

Oh, one last thing, read this story cos it was recommended by @aminex! :D

The main character is a magic user, so far a primary earth mage. The chapters may be short but they are pretty fulfilling reads anyway. A book that seems easy to keep up even with sporadic updates and short chapters. I had no real issues with the spelling/grammar. His fiancee had 0 chance to develope into a character i would give a damn about but i guess it helped in some ways. The MC is well rounded with no real strong points, except his magic/where he learned it, In the 7 chapters you begin to get a feel for his personality which is nice.

The story is the usual system assimilation trope -- Earth is being assimilated into a system-based universe, the MC needs to choose their powers and survive the new dangers with the help of magick.

Drawing heavy inspiration from the Daniel Black series MC chooses to have sorcery over flesh, earth, water, and finally magic itself -- granting innate, master-level, subconscious knowledge of everything that uses mana (conjuring, banhishment, enchanting, runes, etc). Also like Daniel Black, MC needs to feel he is the smartest person in the room, belittle women, look busy, and solve all problems by blowing or burying things up. 

The story is generally entertaining, which is the main point of reading such novel. Stuff happens with the MC, the universe is plausible -- I particularly like the Chaos waves that progressively change the world as we know it, and that people choose random stuff as their power. There's MC progression, link to known lore, and some good laughs there.

The author's grammar and style is improving dramatically throughout the story, giving me hope as there are some things that are becoming very problematic and hard to look over:

- There's no character progression other than the MC. All characters are introduced and abandoned within a few chapters, without explanation. The author simply stops talking about them. 

- Female characters only exists to either drool over MC, and/or for MC to put them in their place. At least there's no harem!

- Male characters all sound like MC. i.e.: like a teenager boy.

- MC modus operandi is to bury all his problems, both figuratively and literally. Seriously, all enemies are either buried, drowned, or one-shot killed.

- The author adds and removes elements to/from the story without context. It feels that the author gets ideas from other works, decides to incorporate them without the proper build up, and then just drops the thing there and forgets about them later.

- MC is a solution looking for a problem. Out of nowhere MC decides that his nemesis is a race that is in conflict with all other races in the universe for thousands of years, and set out to single-handedly plan, build, and deploy an army to destroy them without ever seeing one, let alone going to the trouble to validate that the army is actually effective against such threat. The MC doesn't seem to have any other goal other than obsess over his armor and hideouts.

Again, overall the story is entertaining, but it is getting very distracting to not have a coherent narrative bringing all the cool stuff together. I binged the whole story in a few days, but as the most recent chapters were approaching, I was finding myself making an extra effort to keep reading.

To start with, I should say that I started reading this around when it first started, and followed it up until the 80th chapter or so.  I unfollowed for several reasons, which I will talk about here, but a few days ago saw it again and picked it back up, mainly just to pass the time and see where the author had taken the story.  I decided to push my way through to the end, and I did, only it took several days and was indeed a push, rather than something that I really couldn't put down.  Having read to the curent final chapter, I feel that I have a pretty good understanding of why it was that it was such a struggle for me to get through, and, even if some of my criticisms are subjective, I feel that at least the author should have the knowledge of my expiriences for future reference.

I should start by saying that although I have already been quite critical, I don't think that this story is overtly bad.  I think that maybe that is part of the problem.  It seems to fit in a realm where it is entertaining enough for me to keep on reading, but flawed enough where I wanted to stop.  Its like it kept me in a constant back and forth; annoying, but not quite annoying enough to stop.  In the end, this did eventually cause me to stop reading, both today and in the past, due to how the story was simultaneously good and bad, to the point that the bad started to outway the good.

The easy part for me with this story is the grammar.  I'm no grammar nazi, and I didn't notice any mistakes in grammar, although I'm sure there were at least a few, so that's certainly a positve.

In terms of the story, there are some good, and some bad things in my opinion.  In terms of the good: there is pretty decent pacing, there is progression of the main character and the plot, especially in the early chaos chapters, and there are several overarching storylines that can lead to good places (with the world tree/wife stuff, the undead, etc.).  In terms of the bad: there is no real goal most of the time, which can work well, but sometimes feels like wasted time for myself and the main character, and there is also the problem of when there is a goal or situation, it can be really quick and anticlimatic (ex: learning about and finding brother all hapened within a couple chapters and ended in a mediocre way).  

In terms of style, I have one main critique for how the story was written; the relationship between seriousness and comedy/randomness.  Many serious stories incorporate an element of levity or comedy in order to make the story more bearable.  Similarly, many comedies on this website, which usually come down to randomness = comdey, include some elements of seriousness in order to keep the story grounded.  What I find to be the problem with the style of this story is that the ratio of serious to silly seems to be around fifty-fifty.  Half the time is spent on jokes or randomness, the other half on trying to progress the story, dealing with drama, tradgedy, etc.  What this does for me is that it provides the weaknesses of both types of story, and the strengths of neither.  The story is simultaneously cracking jokes and dealing with situations that should have caused mental anguish, which end the end, just makes me feel emotionless.

Lastly, the characters.  While much of this is connected to both the story and the style, I found the characters to be the most flawed part.  The reason for this is that the characters feel like caricatures of real people.  I'll keep this short because I've written so much, but not every character needs to be weird in some way.  Much like the story, I felt that the characters all had certain quirks to them, which meant that there was no character who was just a normal, relatable person.  I would compare this to the show The Office.  Every single character is really strange in some way.  But without Jim and Pam, the two normal people who act as the audience in the show, we wouldn't find it as funny or believable, because we would just see it as weird people in an office, without being able to emerse ourselves in the lives of our surrogates, Jim and Pam.

That's basically it.  I feel like I've written a lot a criticism, without a lot of postive, but I wouldn't have been able to get though more than a hundred chapters without there being good within, nor would I have cared enough to write this much in a review.  I hope I don't come across as a douche; I genuinely mean everything I put here as constructive, not destructive, criticism.

I follow a lot of books on RRL. 

This is one of only 2 that I wait eagerly for updates. 

Excellent start to an awesome story.

Super fun read, the MC is both OP and flawed which is fun. sometimes it feels like the author didnt like where things were going and changes aspects of the story relatively abruptly (which they do a good job of writing in btw).

Definitely recommend giving it a read!

 I really enjoy the story and the unique premise really makes the possibilities endless. 

In a single world(universe) there is mana, chi cultivation, psionic abilities, advanced magi tech, enching and everything in between. The unique way abilities came to Earth also mean that abilities were only limited by people's imagination when 'chaos' was being dished out. 

The character's development is really interesting, he is not one of those stubborn set in their ways characters but actually grows and adopts while trying not to loose himself. The characters growing around him are actually given personalities as well and seem like actual people at this point. 

Its a great growth and empire building story, i can feel the Daniel Black influence in here as well, no naughty scenes yet though . hinting that i like those. Eager to see where the rest of the story goes, especially with other Earth humans now being reintroduced that have come from other worlds.

Endless world building possibilities.