Positive points: The side characters are amazing and truly make the story for me. The axe is funny but not obnoxious and the other side characters blend with the story well. The MC is not OP and makes decisions that resemble what your typical gamer would do which many books in the catalog of LitRPG fail to accomplish. So far it feels like the MC does not have a lot of plot armor which is a big plus.
Negative points: Being too realistic can backfire sometimes. Your typical gamer will exhaustively go through every option before making a selection on class, stats, skills, etc. The MC in this story does the same thing. Due to this trait, at times, I felt like I was listening to someone describe their experience in a video game rather than experiencing the game for myself. If I wanted to experience a game IRL then I’d play a video game on my PC or console, not read/listen to a book.
Neutral points: I’ve seen some reviews say that they love the fact that the MC is an idiot. This can be annoying when you just want him to make the obvious best decision and other times it can be nice to have my expectations flipped.
Regardless, I will quickly purchase the next book (hopefully soon?). I really want to see how other EBO players interact with Ned and company.