Edge Cases

This is quite amazing. One of the most fun LitRPGs on the site, and unique to boot. It's gonna explode in popularity, 100%.

Contrary to what I'm used to, we don't follow a protagonist from Level 1, but meet them when they're already decently strong (at the pinnacle of a Bronze Tier Party, close to breaking through to Silver.) What makes them special are their rare/unique [Classes], which are capable of causing some serious mayhem when combined together. Exploit-levels of mayhem, which gets them in trouble with the [System]. The synergies are so cool.

Seriously, give it a shot. It's explosive, the writing is 10/10 quality, the chapters are long, the characterization is deep  and it's great fun. Also, later on things slightly calm down, and we get some more "slice-of-life"-like party dynamics, chilling and hanging out. (I slightly preferred the fight for their lives).

Edit: things are picking up speed again! Great 

Style score: 5/5
Third person past tense, the classic of Royalroad. POVs often switch between chapters, so we get the chance to see the thoughts and feelings of various characters, not just Donovan. The story wouldn't really work without that, and I like it, even if I'm not usually a fan of multi-POV. As for the actual style, it's great!

Story score: 5/5
I love the world, the perfect amount of necessary worldbuilding, and I love what's been happening up until now. Things are happening, and it's really entertaining. You never know what's going to happen next, it has a way of surprising the reader, and being super creative. There's also waves of things happening all at once, and the party recovering, and just chilling around, hanging out. Overall awesome.

Grammar score: 5/5
Up there with the best on the website. The prose is great, there are no mistakes, and the english is at a good level. I love the writing!

Character score: 5/5
This part the story likes to focus on a lot, but I think is maybe slightly weaker than the other categories? I would still rate it as 5/5, but I had to think about if maybe 4.5 would be more accurate. We get the perspectives of all the different characters, and each one is unique and feels like a person, they all have their backstories and reasons why they do what they do, why they think like they think. But when they sit down and do the "healthy communication" thing, they all start to sound like they're the same person, who talks in the same soft, consoling way, and says the same "correct" things. Kind of like, they all got the same "therapist-training" or something.

This is only a really minor gripe of mine, I barely notice it, but it didn't feel 100% natural to me. Regardless, the characters are awesome, and they deserve a 5/5 score. 

My sort of story. Some comedy, some munchkining, some fun character concepts, plenty of little mysteries and quirks to explore, hints of worldbuilding worth seeing more of... I'm having a good time with it and I look forward to future chapters. Plus, y'know, 100 bonus points for no proofing issues distracting me from the words themselves either. 

Well I've gone and caught up in the space of a day, what an enjoyable read. I look forward to the writathon every year, going sifting through new works looking to hit paydirt, and boys we struck gold!

I'd be hard pressed to name an area I thought this story would be lacking. The writing flows beautifully, the characterisation is top notch and the action so far has been dramatic and satisfying.

If pressed, I'd maybe say the tone thus far is a little too light, too happy. This is purely taken from the wholesome interactions of the group as they gel further together. There has been some fairly ominous worldbuilding that I have enjoyed. That is however absolutely a personal preference and in no way impinges on the quality of the story. You can the see the influence of the authors leanings in that sense, if you take a look at the author's bio.

If you've noticed this story but have been on the fence, I highly recommend you pick it up and give it a read. It is in rising stars at the moment but if it carries on at this quality I wouldn't be too surprised to see it on the front page of best rated. It really is that good.

Whether it's yeeting yourself across half of hyrule or enacting the peasant railgun to exceed the speed of sound, glitchy systems are the best systems to have full freedom in. Edge Cases really nails the core of that fun with abilities that are interesting to think about and theorycraft with. 

Style: My expectations were actually pretty low coming into this, I was expecting heavy-handed therapy scenes alternating with the action and development. But no, while the dialogue occasionally tosses in a canned line about conflict resolution or mental health, it's in the way that real people fall back on those lines. And more importantly, those bits still serve the story rather than taking away from it. Honestly I'd give this 5 stars, but the healthy communication bits still occasionally feel forced, (and more importantly, I know I check reviews that aren't perfect scores first)

Garmmmer: Yeah no issues.

Story: Still a bit early for a proper idea of the story, but the big plot hooks are set for each of the main characters and they're all promising. More importantly, the worldbuilding is a textbook iceberg. For every fact about the world that's explained, there's three more that are hinted at, making you wonder about the economy of some other country without spending hundreds of words explaining what it produces or something. Really makes it feel alive.

Characters are good. They're all common enough archetypes to be familiar, but with enough of a twist to make them interesting. Developed well too so far, though it's a bit too early to be sure

Read it. The first 5 chapters are more story than I see in 20 chapters of most things.

Very nice slice of life of an adventuring party. So far, a good mix of combat and downtime interactions. I really like the changes on the System, color coding, and blue boxes. There are some interesting twists that the author has alluded to in the description. 
Nice to see a mixed race party, worldbuilding is good so far, looking forward to seeing much more of the world. 

EDIT: As of chapter 30, everything still holds true. One of the best fictions I've read on RR hands down.

Reviewing at chapter 8 because I felt like I had to say something. This fiction is excellent--it approaches a standard LitRPG adventuring world through the lens of a party full of 'rare classes', which in non-story terms means 'bullshit that breaks the [System]'. Their methods of breaking the system are unique and well fleshed out even only this far into the story, and there's a lot of really cool concepts in this kinda-deconstruction of LitRPGs that I greatly enjoy. If you're getting tired of standard power fantasy isekai LitRPG and want to look at something a little more nuanced but you still need those epic blue boxes, give Edge Cases a try!

Overall, I highly recommend this story.

Style: 5/5 One very minor gripe: Royalroad allows you to use a full line in the editor instead of ___, which might help PoV swaps. Also, I personally dislike constantly switching PoVs, but this fiction does it excellently and smoothly enough to where it wasn't a problem.

Story: 5/5 We're still early on into the story, but we've already been introduced to so many amazing concepts. I won't spoil them for any prospective readers, but the explanation we get for the [System] and it's brokenness works pretty well, and the world feels lived in, with background details tossed in every now and then that really complete the story.

Grammar: 5/5 No major issues.

Character: 5/5 Would you look at that! Well-adjusted characters who have a personality beyond "me see bad guy, me go kill" (not that this is a bad personality for characters to have, but seeing more variety is always nice). The characters feel human, even when one of them very much isn't (not a spoiler, revealed like 10 words in), and the way they talk out their problems without being overly dramatic about things is refreshing and great to read.

Exploring the mindsets of these wonderful adventures, their psychologies and their experiences, is almost more intense than the system jank. Not that the system jank isn't amusing as well! And it seems that dungeon puns don't escape this story either, fur one of these adventurers is derivan friendship from what the system would have considered his enemies!

How the system plays into the world disconnects a lot of tension and immersion. Instead of reading about people, it feels like a story of game avatars from their perspective, like watching puppets move according to a system.

Its fun, but the system is like an ill thought, oddly programmed video game. And that holds precedence over immersion and tension. 

The experience is like reminiscing over something funny or cool that happened while playing tabletop rpg such as DND. Fun and amusing not immersive. Not a story that you get lost in.

Realistic system breaking using the interpretation of purposefully vague almost "meta" skills.

That's the hook, that's what this story has to offer. Getting a bit into it, normally I dislike the system breaking trope because it feels like it's always a way to screw with the progression. Either power boost an MC by cheating them skills/stats or nerfing them in the same way.

Edge cases however does so in a "realistic" way. The system feels like something programed and the meta skills seem like an extension of the magic system that weren't accounted for in the [system] programming. Individually they are mostly "safe" but skill interactions between multiple skills can lead to strange or un accounted for effects. 

The Grammar and Style are functional and clean. It's easy to read without any weird Poise and has essentially no mistakes.

The only nitpick I could possibly give is somewhere between the character and style score. The characters are fleshed out and animated and talk and banter and bounce off each other well...but for alot of the story it feels less like they are citizens of some magical world and more like they are a DND group campaigning through a magical world...if that makes sense?

They feel like they are friends outside of reality and some of the situations and banter don't feel "real". It doesn't feel like something someone would say in a situation like that...but it's also entertaining. I like the idea of listening to DND players argue about how their skill should work with the DM the DM nodding rolling some dice and saying..."welp. Guess you can block your hair tangling up - you are right the air is kind of attacking your great hairdo." (fictional scenario to remain spoiler free).

The thing is...despite feeling like they are roleplaying at times, they are still really well created characters. At the chapter I'm at there's an emotional series of events related to Misa's backstory that is really really well done. All of the main characters are fleshed out and have goals and attention so my "they are larger than life" nitpick is really just that...a nitpick I'm focusing on because everything else is perfect.

If it's not evident I really do like this story and recommend it for those who like series like Ar'kendrithyst.

Great mechanics and awsome characters. I'm really interested to see what's next. Cool original feeling world. Really well adjusted and real feeling characters. A focus on clever problem solving rather then grinding or wand waving. I'm really looking forward to the next chapter. Thanks for the story and here is some words for my word count. Super cool. Good stuff. Refreshing. Gave me feeling. All the characters are main characters. I care about their motivations