World Keeper

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.

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.

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 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. 

Very interesting read. The story has so much potential that I am a bit sad that the author has failed to harness it. I think the problem is with Terra's characterization. The author has obviously wanted a harem from the get go but perhaps Terra's character was to create conflict. As of chapter 45 I am not very sure wt the author is trying to do or thinking about.

SPOILER. It's not ok for Dale to sleep with his goddess but it is apparently ok for her to? Like wth is going on, really? Bihena, one of his creations is hostile to him and he just goes along with it. Not even trying to find out why she's hostile or wtf happened. The goddess ask him for something and he does it. They do something, he finds out, not fully on board but yet goes along with it. Where is his voice? What does he want to do with his world? What does he want the goddesses to do? Does he want to just laze while Terra does everything? If so, then his actions are contradictory. Does he want to rule over his world instead of Terra? If so, his actions are contradictory. (see wt i mean?)

I completely understand when ppl review of it's anime-ish characteristics. The characters have minimal to no depth. Cardboard cut-outs. Cliches.

It is still an enjoyable read but if the author is planning to go anywhere sensible and indepth with this story, he needs to do something about his characters. 

Tbh, I just read worm by wildbow (yes, i just found out it exists and read it) and everything currently pales in comparison. To be fair, as my mind is very critical, i can at least tell you there is a bit of a problem.

I really like the whole idea of the story....but my main problem was the main cast, i mean he was the one creating all the gods but they just seem more or less bossing him around, idk maybe it's just me but could of ben better i stoped at chap 45, i just couldn't get past that with all their personalities. Anyways keep up the gud work.

I love world building/dungeons like novels so I am biased it's good just not for everyone currently caught up read entire story in 2 days 

Contains some tropes and cliche stuff (whatever I dont really think it really takes away from the story)

Interesting take on system-system?

It's an enjoyable read and a time killer (in my book that's a plus with a long back log of stuff to catch up on)

Tldr:its not for everyone but give it a try if you dont like it you dont have to read it 

One of the best world building stories on Royal Road!!!

Chapter 57: Underworld Woes

I read this a while ago, so the scores can be considered +/- 0.5 stars from what I have given.

Style: 4/5

I don't recall anything being in issue in terms of style. If I had read it more recently it would probably have a higher score, but since it's been a while it gets the benefit of being better than many works, but the doubt marks it down from a perfect or near perfect score.

Story: 4/5

I'm blatantly giving points here for the concept and the way some things have developed. I find it very interesting, but it loses a bit because thus far the greater plot hasn't revealed itself and most of the potential this story creates is being explored or not being explored as the author wants/wanted to make it available on amazon in order not to deviate too much from the main story. Personally I feel this is misguided at best, as the people who enjoy this story are likely to be the type who would enjoy the detours as it would more fully flesh out the world.

Grammar: 4/5

It's been to long to make an accurate call here. I don't remember any frustrations or annoyances distracting me as I read so the grammar could be a five, but a four is the safest bet.

Characters: 3/5

At this point in time, the characters are easily the weakest part of this story. Don't get me wrong there is a lot of potential to work with but whether it will come to anything or not is a bit of a toss up. Mainly it's just a lack of depth and motivations and given the nature of events in the story this is something that can't be helped to a certain degree.

Overall: 4/5

I enjoy the concept and have few issues with anything that has been presented so far. If you have read the authors other work World Seed this is in my opinion an overall improvement in several of the technical aspects of writing. On the other hand, there is the issue of the authors desire to monetize parts of the story he considers peripheral, but that I consider the real pay off of the story. This would be a lesser issue if the author had a complete work, but both stories are currently ongoing and update somewhat irregularly.