NOTE – there are spoilers in here…
I really felt compelled to write my own review here after seeing so many 5 star reviews, which was part of why I decided to listen to this one in the first place. It bothers me when there are so many 5 star reviews when it’s not really deserved because I think that misleads people. If you listen to as many litrpg’s as I do, you get a good feel for which ones are really amazing, which ones are decent, which ones are meh, and which are plain terrible. It’s like digging for gold, and most of the time you end up with tin, but occasionally you find something rare and high quality – this is not one of those.
Don’t get me wrong, the this is not a bad piece in general. The voice performances are actually very good. It’s just everything else is pretty lackluster and generic. The post apocalyptic setting has been done before, but much better in other novels. The boxes was a pretty obvious rip off of the stacks from Ready Player One. In fact much of the novel borrows from that book. Multiple vr worlds, a vr girl love interest, best friend in vr, a world spanning tournamentpuzzle, etc. I get it, lots of writers take story elements from other books in order to build their own story, but there was so much here that it was a real distraction since I kept being reminded of that other book as I was listening to this one, and thinking how much better the other was even though RPO is not a litrpg.
The character was also just not very interesting. Very few foibles or quirks or endearing elements. The humor with the best friend was decent, but never laugh out loud. The love interest was simply meh. No real passion or spark or deep investment. For the auxiliary characters like the dwarves I was confused as to who was an npc and who wasn’t. The initial character’s op aspects that allowed him to power up fast were never explained in terms of how it was applied (was it percentage based? was it a hidden trait? what exactly did the miners get that allowed this?), it’s sudden removal as a bug felt more annoying because it was never explained rather than be concerning.
The rpg parts of the litrpg were pretty bland and felt half baked and inconsistent. Very little time detailing the mechanics in general so if you like that kind of thing you will be disappointed. There’s a lot of time spent discussing the stats, but the skills are all wonky. You need to go to trainers to learn a melee skill like lunge attack, but spells like waterfall that do tons of damage come from books that just randomly appear on kills? And how exactly do the classes work? The main villian is a powerful death knight, so why wouldn’t everyone pick that class since it was so powerful? Is that something rare? I understand there’s a endless amount of classes that would be possible in a multi-world scenario, but there still should be some kind of detailed focus on a couple classes and consistent skill system. Either that, or ditch the rpg part and focus on the lit part.
Sadly lit part was again not very strong. Is there any real drama or tension? Sort of. Does the main character really feel connected to his avatar? Kind of. Pangea is supposed to be where everything happens, but whenever he gets into the world there doesn’t seem to be a strong feeling of tension or excitement. Why is that? I can’t really explain it. Maybe it’s because there is not enough detail put into the world itself as the story rushes along? The novel itself is fairly short, which might explain the lack of depth put into these things. I don’t know. Overall I just felt something was continually missing.
Is this worth listening to? I think if you aren’t looking for one of those rare and exceptional litrpgs then sure, this is an “ok” litrpg to try out. It’s not bad, it’s not great. There’s definitely worse litrpgs out there. But it’s not a 5 star entry in my opinion, so just keep expectations realistic.