I tried to keep this review short because the book doesn’t warrant a long one, but it’s hard to say all this in just a few words.
It’s just not great, even by the low standards I have for litrpgs.
1. The main character is just kind of cringe, and a bit of a twat.
That’s the biggest issue here. The main character does an old man “you kiddos get off mah lawn ya hear, don’t test me young man,” shtick the entire book. Yes, the main character is supposed to be old.
However he lives in a universe where it’s not that unusual for people to pass 100, and some people are 200-300+ years old although he doesn’t meet them.
Really he’s a bit of a spring chicken compared to some. Moreover the way he talks is weird even by modern standards, and pretty condescending in many cases.
It’s rarely even mentioned in the book despite being something that would be utterly bizarre coming from a character everyone thinks is a teen.
The fact that he’s running around with a *sword cane* and doing hamfisted shonen anime maneuvers really just misses every taste cluster. It’s like the MC is someone’s OC fanfiction character from the same era when teens still thought shadow the hedgehog was cool and edgy.
2. The deck.
As with most stories that involve a deck of playing cards in a litrpg setting, the author’s magic system makes *no use at all* of the fact that magic comes from a deck of cards.
It’s basically just skill slots, might as well be reading Path of Ascension but with more abilities. There’s nothing really to it, and I found that quite disappointing after how big a deal it is thematically that it just. . . . wouldn’t actually matter.
3. The MC never struggles.
A huge chunk of the first book is taken up by the main character just running around getting stronger without encountering any meaningful resistance or having much of any trouble at all for hour after hour of reading. Ultimately it just feels like nothing of note happens in like the first 10 hours of the audio book, and like all of it could have been skipped since there weren’t any “high note” events to remember.
It does seem like the author realizes their deficiency here, as they *tell* the reader that the main character struggled, but they never *show* it.
It’s always [fight scene where the MC effortlessly slaughters everyone with minimal detail], “wow that sure was close, oh boy, I really struggled there.”
Over and over again, leaving the story with no real sense of stakes or danger.
4. The MC doesn’t seem to care much for people.
Sure, we are *told* the MC is heroic, and we are shown *once* that he actually is in the prologue.
After that it’s captain “F-U I got MINE” as he seeks personal power and plots to solo grind his way to fame and glory.
We get repeated anecdotes and reminiscing about how he cares about people, and the author kind of puts him in situations where he *ends up* helping people.
However we see his internal narration where he’s giving hardly any thought to random innocent people and old classmates dying, unless indirectly helping them would directly benefit him.
It comes across like the main character is a sociopath pretending not to be to the reader, but I think the author just bungled the first 70% or so of the book.
Maybe I’ll give him a second chance with the next book, but only because everytime the perspective switches off the dumpsterfire that is the MC, the story is pretty solid with no real issues other than perhaps pacing.