One of the issues with VRMMO litRPGs is that authors worry that stakes within a game world are not large enough for an audience to care about, so they tend to create stakes outside the game world, and that probably could be effective if done well, but in this case, I found myself wanting to enjoy the story’s focus and progression within the game world, but not being able to do so because the conflicts outside the game world are so much more intense and important.
At almost any point not only in this book, but in this series, if I ask myself if it would be in the main character’s best interest to just stop playing the game and tell the truth about everything to appropriate authorities, the answer is “yes”.
Additionally, one of the most interesting themes in the novel is about how the AI game controller improves those who play it; however, as the series goes on, it appears that this is only true for the special main character and those within his bubble. Unhappy and emotionally unstable people who are also players in the game seem to actually be antagonized into being worse people by the system. It feels like the author sacrificed this unique and interesting theme just because he decided that the narrative needed human player antagonists.
Ultimately, the reason I stopped reading was when a female love interest sacrificed her agency to empower the male main character. That’s a misogynistic fantasy and though I had a lot of problems with the books up to that point and was trying to struggle through as these became popular during the infancy of the LitRPG genre, I moved from mildly disliking this series to reviling it.