Other then the settlement building everything kind of sucked. The combat was really bad. Just one example out of many reasons why that sucked. The main character tended to only lose, when he for some reason didnt use his deux ex machina powers. The climatic battle was really painful because of this. In thid case the power was clearly forgotten, just so it could be used later after the drama was finished. Things line that really hurt suspension of disbelief.
As for the characters, character development and world building. I feel the author shot himself in the foot by trying to do two contradictory things at once. Basically a major part of the story sets pretty clearly that the game denizens are not real not even maybe real. They are all just roles being acted out.
But in spite of this huge chunks of the character development and stories act like that isnt true and rely on the reader being able to basically maintain a second layer of suspension of disbelief. For me at least, I couldnt so I was unable to care about the characters.
Making this worse was a tendency for the author to kind of go back and forth on character aspects (Like a wierd bit where the main character acted like he didnt know it was a game, then next sentence went back to talking about the game world as a game world.). And the way he also really overdid somethings. For example, some side characters were a pair of extremely crippled twins who were also orphans and also geniuses. Waaaay too many unrelates character complications in my opinion.
The main character is generally unlikable as well.
One last thing I want to point out, is the “sexual tension” subplot went on way too long, was way too repetitive, kind of had a creep factor to it. And was kind of super gross once you remembered no one bathed. And it was made clear that BO and other things still occured in game.
Good things again I liked the settlement building parts and there were some funny bits especially the name gag.