MyPerfectUsername
Standard isekai
MC "woke up" in another body from era of easily available FTL to blend of medieval and industrial revolution setting. That's it, that's whe whole story.
I got here because of title "crime lord", but ain't no see here no criminal'y, no lord'y spirit in the story: replace his gang with "adventurer guild" and you get the same story.
Plot is threadbare
Characters written so clearly so it's on the border of parody; everyone doing exactly like he said ( like dolls in a play)
GameLit (the System) is here just because
All we see is as some random dude from distant era magically can do everything better that anyone from first try.
Mild spoiler below to get picture on what you'll see in the story:
He got military-grade magical guns (flintlock musket) drop in his hands, revers-engineer them in an hour(s?) and somehow make in a few hours? days? semi-automatic handgun.
Then he threatens some random manager (not owner!) in a factory to resign in stead of his man. Then throw unknown to us "documents" to said manager and viola, factory increases in productivity twofold and start producing "his" items. Because he said so.
Only around month from his isekai and he already skilled in:
1) managing local gangs
2) politics
3) set up business
4) convinced native goblins to work for him and kill everyone else
5) reverse-engineered few potions
6) reverse-engineered few magitecs
7) reverse-engineered ancient goblin magic
8) made never seen before optical camouflage
9) made few centuries skip in technological advancements
10) invented drugs
11) somehow got money to paid years-long debt
12) recruited hundred of people and trained them to be "force to recone with"
13) trained "special ops ninjas"
All of it and even more in a month
Anime candy in different wrapping
It's okay story if you're looking for generic "I isekaid in different world and became king" anime with all goods and bads from that: funny cliché moments, classic "got three girls by chapter two" trope, random big brain strategist fall in his arms after "inspirational" speech – if you read few novels in this style, you read them all.
So, if you're looking for teenage popcorn – it's for you. If you're looking for realistic kingdom building with the System – it's not.
I don't understand hype
There is nothing special here. I don't understand this hype at all. Weird style, hard to read, totally generic and non-memorable characters... Forced myself to read few times but after around year worth hiatus I can't remember a thing of this story.
How it's so hyped and overrated to the moon? Thousands of bots?
it's hardly Hard Sci-Fi...
... but if you can forgive Author for this sling, it still good read.
The book is about MC from race of stone age lizards who via random event gain human mindset and memory/knowledge of some of humans after Humanity got presumably wiped out. So our MC shoulder on herself task of uplifting and avenge human race, and to try to preserve at least some cultures from them.
It's not hard science fiction, with a lot of factual flaws, but nothing serious. It's not Kingdom Building, but more like drama about family, where family is entire race.
Worth reading, short and with logical ending. With chance for sequel with space otters!
Looks like generic isekai, but could be not.
Genre: this is your average generic when MC isekaid through VR game capsule.
World: while world-building yet bland, it have pretty cool names.
MC: while MC is weak in body and spirit and just your random Joe from Earth(okay, not totally loser, he got girlfriend who may or may not cheating on him), he suddenly doesn't care about his supposed death? transformation? transmigration? whatever happened to him, all reaction we got - side note about few drops of liquid. He did not make any decisions, he didn't think any decision, sometimes I think my cat have more character in him than our MC. It can be good as point to grow.
Side characters: classical, didn't saw anything noteworthy. They're NPC tho, so it's okay
System: I can't say about lore side of the system, but about balance... Your stats can be different from the start; you got titles; lvl 1 dude have 70+ % fire resistance on day one... And can obliterate mundane buildings with single cast... It's not yet a problem per se, if the system are build on extremes, but world-building yet to show that
Immersion: I'm very prickly for this, so get my world with a few tons of salt, but... broke my suspension of disbelief around second chapter and was unable to pick it back again. It's not bad per se, nothing critical... it's just full of little holes, and this story just keeping to poke in my bubble of immersion.
All in all, it's not a bad story. But I can't say it's good. I feel that author is young and projects his naivety to the world, or he's not thought all of it through, or he just keep spreading on all aspects of the story, so instead on brilliance of polished metal in one or two sides, all I see is scratches everywhere. Would it became diamond or left as scratched carbon? We'll see
P.S. Personal opinion: author, try to focus on world and work on it. If you can push it to greatness, you would win your place on Olympus. Focus on your strong sides until it perfect, and only then start to branch in another aspects. Having cliche tropes and bland characters and NPCs all around is not bad. If you can sustain the story by good lore/world/system/style - pick one.
On average, the story is good, but "on average" is operative - some parts are great, but you need to understand what author tried to portrait instead of what you read; some parts are just plain very bad.
In comparison to first chapters it's getting better - rough start for Author and all that beginning. Still had weird problems, but getting better.
After the story is finished, I would recommend Author to rewrite it again while doing research on topic, so he can see progress he made in his career as writer.
Also, just drop first few chapters. They do much more harm than good. You can start your story from the second arc, skip boring beginning, and it would be much better. It can be weird, but all extra information we need can be glimpsed from context (he's yelling "game", interaction with the Guild, marching military), so reader would lose only useless infodump and, to be honest, very bad start. Example of story with skipped beginning: Aurora Scroll (not advertise, just first example I remember). "Welcome to the Sanctum" would be good first chapter - some foreshadowing about his class, new city, some background story and mysterious story of the past.
P.S. I rarelly do review, and if I do, then only when I care about story and/or see potential for Author to grow(or outraged with misleading 5/5 stars reviews from bots)). So work hard and become better! Cultivation never stops :)
Summary:
3/5 - better than average, most negative points could be relatively easy to fix. Would it become 2/5 or 4/5 depends on progression.
Mary Sue
There is so many positive reviews, so I publish one negative. So..
1. Sci-Fi part of novel exists only in tags. Yeah, there is bunch of random high-tech stuff, but without any real science behind, so you can call it not nanobotes, but godly magic, qi, Mana, whatever, and nothing changed
2. Characters are flat and cliche. First girl MC met decided she in love with him, and fuck him in almost first free time
3. MC and co bring justice and democracy to every man in this world. Like.. They went in random bar, and when barman said "you are not welcome here", they call all patrons bitches and start fight. And because this is PG-13, noone dies, even after Superman throw random person on wall head first and make hole in wall
4. MC is cruel to inhumane degree in his stupidity and void empathy. We'll not discuss scenes of violence (when he burn houses of "villains" with all maids and servants inside) here, we do not need that, when MC force immortality on random people who he doesn't know, and doesn't say them about that. Imagine when you are old and nearing your death, and miracle happens, you outlive your sons and grandchildrens. Without your permission.
5. MC talk about secrecy and in same say disclosure Super Secret Plan to man who he doesn't know. Just because.
6. First thing to make Great Good to All Humanity is hire and arm army
7. Main plot is, I think, some "global government", who, of course, all villains and everyday kill innocent peoples. And ofc, this Mega Super Secret And Powerful Transnational Government doesn't know nothing about our hero
8. Etc etc etc.
Resume: if you love comics, when heroes is more villains than bandits, when there is no need to reasoning, JUST BRING JUSTICE, where womans are no more than trophy appendage to MC, then this is for you.
If you like Sci-Fi, reasoning, logic, drama, empathy or "beliveable" characters, then this is not for you.
P.S. Fast pace, light reading, zero brain and in this scope, this is good novel. But there is nothing, what people wrote in reviews.
LitRPG with awful start, but getting much better
TLDR: Fast-improving writting helps eleviate awfully bad written first chapters. I'm hooked, but we'll see what happens around chapter 100(I hope to bump score to 4). Will recommend to read, if you can cope with translated chinese novells. As someone who liked RotTWRtW I have high expectations. Go author, go! 👍
UPD: yeah, it's really getting much better past 10 chapters.
Style: First chapters is hard to read, they are awful from dialog and style point. So bad that I skip few chapters almost totally. Around chapter six they start getting better, but still a lot of rough edges.
Grammar: there is some typos/error, but overall it's okay. I'm not native speaker myself, so who I am to judge? :)
Story: Still getting on tracks. I will ignore first chapters and will see what's going on. Until this point there is a lot of weird situations, but not too much to drop straight, and impovements rising my hopes
Characters: I'll say 3/5. I can't differentiate between girls. And our MC motivation and character is not yet clear
Summary: for rough draft I'll say 4/5
![Warlock's Gate [DROPPED]](https://www.royalroadcdn.com/public/covers-full/warlocks-gate-aaaafn-xw8.jpg?time=1626464038)
Awful description, nice story
Nice story, somewhat good characters, not yet bland "blue boxes", awful boring description and some problems with style(PoV jumping written a little bit confusing, and too many random terms/gods/names).
So, i would say that's a nice story to read if with a little difficulty to follow it.
P.S. Worth joining Patreon for at least one month tho price/reward too pricey for my opinion
Good first try, but characters like always. UPDATE
Good start, but I can't believe in Del. And in brother's girlfriend. These characters looks like plain NPC, who exist only to revolt around MC and tell about world via their mouth. Few examples:
1. MC was "wow, he serious, I never see him so serious!" - hey, you met him three hours ago! You didn't know he existing yesterday!
2. Why you asking random guy in what country you live. I can't believe you didn't ask you parents about it. I can't believe you didn't ask about system from your parents.
3. Del and brother's girlfriend is copy-paste characters when they talk about something worldbuilding.
Good first try to write novel. And like almost every author, main problem is characters.
Updated: MC become disgusting egocentric arrogant 2D hypocritical Mary Sue.
I'm on RR for years, and this is first time I feel so disgusted by MC. She's not cliche character, she have something in character, but all non-cloche of it only make me despise her more. It's some talent to write MC like that, really. Probably, plot? Idk. But character development in this direction continues for months.
Decent generic litrpg with perks
It's fairly good if you take in account it's first work. Have common mistakes: a lot of describing and talking with himself instead of doing/showing; over 9000 luck; random encounter favoring MC; brainless MC when it's good for plot drive machine; etc... But have good chances on getting better, I can see it's improving already.
Story-wise it's still unknown, plot basically "I died, what happened?", MC just exited from Tutorial, but we already can see some plots brewing.
Characters we'll see, MC somewhat bland and instead of showing his character Author decided to copy paste his dossier; MC's partner seems okay, but it's too early to talk about.
Grammar wise I can't say anything because I'm not native :]
Conclusion: solid 4 for first try.