World Keeper

On my initial read-through, I dropped this fic around chapter 30-40. The main character repeatedly made stupid decisions, and was walked all over by everyone around him, regardless of what he did.

However, boredom had me turn back to this, and he did get better--the harem oddly turned up the very beginning, but only included two people, and faded to black whenever something beyond cuddling happened.. Very understated, which was a plus for me, though I wonder why he included it at all.

The protagonist wised up at least a little, and the people around him stopped walking all over him. Plus, for a royal road story, the grammar and writing is above average.

So why the two stars, you might think? Well, as of chapter 316, there are a few reasons:

• The main character still makes bizarre, enormous mistakes, which no one points out. He buys an ability that would let him split his mind, and have one portion sped up a thousand fold. This would let him train with the sped up portion until he's godlike without moving himself up the rankings in the "deadly" game he's in. He knows this, and just...stops halfway through, for no reason. He could probably finish it in a week from the progress he shows, and instead trains other abilities he could speed up with this one.
• He rushes into the war games (you aren't forced in until your planets are a certain level of power) instead of training his personal abilities and skills. Again, for no reason. This would easily be solved with the games forcing him in after a certain amount of time. Instead, he looks suicidal and completely apathetic for his people.
• No one has normal reactions or morals. He dies, learns EVERYONE he's ever known is now dead, and doesn't give a shit. Certain Keepers train their personal abilities, and reset the worlds to become "avengers" who target "monstrous" rank one keepers. How is a person who sends monsters to attack worlds worse than genociding worlds by resetting them? It makes no sense.
• Worst of all, there's no conflict. The horrifying keeper games that are threatened show up all of once for real in the time I read (the rest are with friendly people), and it was a joke.
• I don't see how the author can possibly scale the power levels or ever realisticially finish the series, from what we see of the higher levels of keepers.

TL;DR: For those who push through the first several chapters, trying to get to the games--don't bother.

Man... I was planning to enjoy this one, I was excited by the premise but... just why woukd you do it like this?

I realized this was going to be a painfully disappointing one the moment you skipped the blue screen depicting the other races stats and info, and I don't understand, why would you do that? That's like half the charm this story promises, what are we here if not for the world building? The not-real relationships between the gone-from-broing-to-hateful MC and his artificial pseudo harem? Well I'm certainly not.

Dale Mitchell started as your boring average person who becomes your average boring godlike world keeper, there's that, kinda fucked up the fact he likes to implant fake feelings in his subordinates but hey this might just not be my cup of tea. But then what's matter? So to put this way, I have trouble reading your characters because not only they feel fake and cheap, but because they are obstructing what really matters. Most of them. I mean I can deal with Dale and Catwoman weird relationship, but then you give me this group of characters and lets count what they've brought to the table.

The wacky relationship between MC and most females, the loli thingy, the catwoman GRINNING ALL FUCKING DAY, literally everytime she's got her turn to talk she's got some kind of grin for the occasion, Dale not understanding why is fucked up to manipulate others feelings ''wuh wuh why u so mad Bihema'' well fuck how could she not be mad, she knows what's up, actually the question is are we sure the other two are sentient? I can understand catgirl but the other two... are we sure they aren't still some kind of mindless dolls?

Now if you give me to choose between which I should read, read all that stuff or read about the origins of life, the dawn of civilizations, the conflict in the lives of these mortals, the technology advance of the humans in comparison with the elves, the continents, the seas, the cultures, I don't know. And that's why I dislike those characters, they're not that bad but they are an obstacle for what really matters. I mean, damn, I don't have anything against loli or some other anime references but to be clearer, you give me a detailed focus on who are the current leaders of all civilizations on one hand and a loli is justice monologue in the other then I'm not gonna give a fuck about lolis.

Then it comes to the other half of the charm of this fic, being god, or learning to be god and his interactions with the mortals, this is actually there but going slow and gotta deal with the other unwanted bs meanwhile, sadly. But then again there's close to 0 interaction with the mortals, again, what are we here for? The keeper games are still someway far, so I don't see how great is the admin room compared to the whole world that exists outside.

To put it simple, this could be amazing but its not.

It's bad. There's no stakes because the MC is the most powerful creature in the world by far, the actual "invasion" part is used twice, once where the MC literally fucking nukes it from orbit and another time where an army goes off and is just never heard from. So it seems like it's trying to be a slice of life right? Well that needs characters, too bad all of them are clumsy one dimensional charicatures. All in all it's less of a story and more of a super powered wish fufillment.

The story itself has a fairly interesting premise - MC becomes a "keeper"(i.e world creator). He gets to design its form, rules, power systems etc.

That, in itself could be really entertaining to read if not for one of two giant flaws this story seems to have :

Simplicity.

We're presented with a powerful tool of creation, where he can basically make anything he imagines reality...But guess what?

The first thing he creates is a beautiful female companion (who coincidentally just so happens to fall in love at first sight, has zero personality etc...oh, and did i mention its a cat-girl?)

That's generic to say the least, but it would not matter if not for what he does next - the all-powerful tool of creation presents him some example power systems in addition to a custom one...and what does he do? He does not even take notice of the custom system and directly chooses the, once again, incredibly generic "magic system", without giving it as much as a thought.

He still has an option to customize it though....but he does not, he simply picks another option from a drop down menu. He proceeds to go for a generic game system, without giving it a single idea of his own (levels and classes, skills locked to class etc, like really?)

Then he creates races...or should i say makes elves blatantly overpowered. Like, really, humans have lower stat total, lower lifespan, no special racial abilities, lower everything basically.But alright, elves are meant to be powerful after all...but no, he proceeds to create several other generic races like beastmen, giving it no thought of his own.

What I'm trying to say is, the MC and all characters of this story suffer from complete and utter lack of imagination, are childish and generally dumb. Oh and the kitsune companion of our MC is so proud of him doing an absolute worthless mess of a creation she jumps onto him and they have sex.

...But that aside, other than the characters and their glaring flaws, everything else in the story is interesting, its just that, I simply don't want another otaku simpleton of a unimaginative and unrealistic excuse of a MC.

Pros : Good story and grammar, easily readable as everything flows together nicely, has potential to be unique with the way its going (10 chapters out as of review)

Cons : Anime dolls instead of characters

I have read this story twice. Once was when it was new on this site, and now is the second time, while trying to satisy my craving for a 'God' type novel.

(During the first time I'd read futher than present, upto the chapter where the Protagonist has a conflict with one of the Goddess for making her forcefully loving him)

The base concept of this novel is fantastic, as it allows for a wide range of imagination. It has many possible ways for wish-fulfillment for the readers.

Alas, the Author has disappointed me and perhaps he did not put much effort into thinking for this novel. By thinking I do not mean just the plot, characters, or the setting of the novel... I mean thinking about basic concepts.

Time will keep on flowing, and the reader would expect that the Protagonist would make laws or systems which can transcend time, which wouldn't be affected by what era the world currently is in.

However we do not see that happening!

First, the Protagonist chooses the lousy 'game' system, which allows for zero creativity, as their World Keeper has already arranged for some specific and rigid classes. The classes are Mage, Warrior, etc. and feel as if the Keeper is forcing them to develop in an extremely specific direction.

Let us ignore the generic classes chosen, which aren't too bad (except for the Human-Horse hybrid species- it does not make sense!)

Next is even more lousy- the Afterlife. The Protagonist selects 72 'Angels' and 'Devils/Demons' to 'judge' the passed on souls.

Now here comes the question : How would they judge the soul ?

'Judgement' in itself a mortal concept.

Just imagine :

For the ants, beings like humans a like Gods. Let us assume that we are asked to judge their souls. Frankly speaking, would we give a shit what the ant has done when it was alive ?

Also, why are the possible judgements only two- Heaven or Hell ?

It's like if you slaughter a country, you'll go to hell.

And if you steal a biscuit, you'll still go to hell.

Things like this requires questioning the basic concepts and asking and analysing yourself, which the Author has probably does not seem to have done for this novel.

There are more others, like how the Protagonist does not plan the future of his World well, be it races or the geography of the world, and always randomly and conviently adding stuff, like sloppily patching a program.

(Maybe because he is too eager to have sex with his catgirl)

Once again, the concept for this novel is great, but not much thought has been put for it. I'm not talking about some high level philosophical thinking, but the novel is not even able to satisfy the reader's wishes.

It is a pity.

I hate to say it, but Dale seems like a dipstick. I mean, who nods like a mindless idiot when they don't fully understand what is about to happen? Also! Why did the catgirl person not explain everything in detail? Imo It felt so rushed it was almost cruel to the MC. She said a very, and I cannot stress this word enough, BRIEF summary of the trouble he's in for. She jumped from one thing to another with only a few questionably helpful things here and there. Obviously this guy is not very sure of what he's doing considering he took absolutely NO time to think about the advantages and disadvantages of each possible starter package. By the way, Dale, instead of choosing the 'cool' package how about choosing the one that's less likely to get you killed because I would imagine that being priority number one! Plus, who the hell told her to speed anything up! Smh. Like don't do shit I haven't approved of. Especially when I need time to think out strategies on how to create, shape, and develop an entire planet to maximum defensive capabilities.!

This was just after chapter 1. But what you have here is potential Gold. Don't ruin it by simplifying the protagonist's situation and the situation of the developing planet. I mean, give us details about the creation of the planet itself! Not just 'POOF! OK ALL DONE!' No. Be better Author-man. Unfortunately I can't read this anymore because I tried to look at what happens later on (y'know a glimpse of what interesting things may convince me to stay) and I just think that you should start over from scratch and re-do the story with more realistic elements. Like remorse over killing a man or the struggles of coming to terms with being the creator of an entire world with people that will face invasion and whatnot.

All I'm saying is that you kinda butchered the beginning and glossed over the small but important details. Other than that it's A-1 material.

To sum it up shortly, this story has a lot of great potential but Its completely ruined by the fact that the author likes anime a bit too much.

He spent most of his 'points' (currency used to buy new things to put in his wolrd) on making 'goddesses' and their personalities, which honestly wouldn't be a problem if they didn't only exist to satisfy the MC's Furry/loli fetish. 

I ended up dropping the story at chapter 19 because that's the point that he gets really serious about creating his harem... in a story that doesn't have the harem tag. 

Tl;dr - from my knowledge up to chapter 19, This is a good story if you're not bothered by lots of weeb stuff and harems. 

The story premise sounds really good. 

Being able to build and influence the world how you like it. Doing it through a system and direct influence. Sounds really interesting. 

It would be if the MC would do something like that. All he's doing is training magic and other energies to grow stronger. So this is just another wuxia/xanxia novel. Really disappointing.

I had a hard time reading through this novel but I kept reading just in case it got better. I could have understood if the author was just having a rough time finding direction. But this story was such a letdown. At the beginning of the novel, it already starts off without an engaging start. It starts from the perspective of the MC talking about his job. It doesn't really give him any backstory but the fact he's a middleaged truck driver. But his character doesn't reflect that. It reflects an excited teenage boy. The MC feels flat and unrealistic. Then here comes the first large event in the story. The MC hits a man in the middle of the street, a life-shaking event worthy of years of guilt and remorse. But the MC glosses over it like he just got some nice shoes muddy, or forgot to bring a gift to his best friend's birthday party. Then, to top all of this off the author decides to forego anything creative in the story and create a generic fantasy world with a game system and geometric mage system [Spell circles etc...] When he creates his helper he makes a catgirl who then within the first two chapters jumps and has sex with him for no apparent reason.

I was hoping for more and this story really had the ability to turn out to be fantastic. But the author isn't worthy of the topic and this story isn't worth your time.

Good concept. Has much more potential than all those dungeon building stories as a world building story in my opinion. It is worth to give this fiction a try.

Writing style is not bad. The author manages to avoid some common style errors. It gets a passing score. But while it is technically not bad, it is also quite bland. The writing could really use some embellishment. Some pretty adverbs in descriptions and all that...

Story is off to a decent start. As I stated above, the general concept has great potential for a world building story. A common weak point of such stories is that they get repetitive and boring rather shortly, but the author is already setting up a system to potentially avoid this by getting the main character out of god/creation-mode and into the personal adventure mode.

At this point, I will go back to the style. So far, when it comes to the execution, it seems that the author is going with a mechanical approach to the story telling, especially to the world building. While number crunching about how to manage a world is fun, this needs to be supported by pleasing storytelling in a literary sense. Otherwise the story becomes too monotone. For example the author just completely glosses over the initial creation of the world, while a very striking and pleasing couple of paragraphs could be written about "the process of turning a grey nothingness into a vast planet filled with lush colors". Missed opportunities like this for potentially epic moments in the story saddens and disappoints me.

Grammar is as good as it can be expected from a web novel. There are some mistakes that I came across so a proofread could improve it further. But they were few and not very detrimental to my reading experience.

The characters are where the story really loses its points. Good thing is, it is still early so this could still be remedied. But so far, I've read 9 chapters (counting prologue) of this story, and I have yet to meet any real characters in it. Terra is the generic anime cat girl stereotype, without any distinguishing characteristic. The protagonist is the same, as far as characteristics goes, he might as well be "side-dude #148" in "generic web novel #72". They haven't displayed any emotion, character quirks, anything that sets them apart as a character really.

What is more worrying is that, character development is also pretty much nonexistent. If there was nice character development implemented into the story starting with the next chapter, the character problem would probably mostly be solved by chapter 20. But so far, things do not look so good on this front. I have just read chapter 8 and I know exactly as much about Terra as I knew at chapter 1.

But I am going to restate this, although this is a problem at the moment, there is still time to fix this problem.

This fiction has great potential, but to live up to that potential some improvements are needed. Specifically the bland writing and nonexistent character development needs to be improved. As a sucker for world building stories, I will definitely be following this one. I recommend that people give this one a shot and I definitely recommend it for people who like analytical world building. 

* Review is written as of chapter 8.

* Hoping the fiction improves, forcing me to improve this review and the score along with it.