LitRPG

Ah, I don't ever really look too closely at the covers of most of these. That pic doesn't necessarily inspire me to punch him as much as his words and thoughts do.

I made it further and I'm lightening up on him a bit, but part of that is because it clicked that this author must be asian and part of the way he's speaking in his mind is kind of foreign to me. I mean, "Huhu" is a pretty dead giveaway that it isn't a western english speaker, but even without that I was starting to get that feeling like I mentioned with calling him Nat. I can often tell when an author is eastern european or russian too, because they have a different way of expressing certain things. So that helps a bit, because a lot of the humor doesn't quite land the way I think it should, or his attitude feels foreign to me a lot of the time, etc. but I can kind of just wave that off as him not thinking like I do.

I still hate the fact that authors seem to be obsessed with making introvert characters (this guy often talks about how draining it is to speak to more than one person), because it happens so often in litrpg/anime that it isn't unique, much less interesting, by now. And I get the way he doesn't want to show weakness and anyone not helping him is just hindering him, but like half of the shit he has to beat someone down for might have been avoidable if he wasn't such a prick in the first place. Sure, maybe punching someone out of the blue so you can analyze their defensive skill might be the fastest way to learn how to replicate it, but normal people don't fucking do that, even to someone that hates them. His choices are almost universally the most efficient short term, but cause so many problems long term that I question his problem solving abilities. I realize it might be part of my conditioning with western writing where heroes are mostly good guys at heart, but I just don't understand this obsession with being an antisocial prick that asians seem to have. It is like they all aspire to be like that. Is that what your parents being disappointed that you only got an A instead of an A+ does to them?

Anyway, I'm tolerating it better now, and perhaps knowing it will never change will help. Or make me give up at some point, but at least I'm not constantly hoping it happens.

Finished book one of Hell Difficulty, and it was a little more tolerable, but holy shit the reviews for it are so bad. Well, the written reviews...those that just rated it somehow got it over a 4 star, but a ton of the written reviews talk about exactly the things I hated and shit all over it.

I gave it a 3 star, but honestly that's being very generous because there isn't anything really special about it so far. The system and world are about as bland as you can get, and there are very few likable characters (Lily and the dog I guess?), while almost everyone else is punchable. So what is the big draw to this series anyway?

The main character is how I would imagine your average Redditor would try to write a character: autistic, militantly introverted, thinks he's smarter than everyone else, and somehow always wins (easily) despite being fucking retarded.

Uriel said:

I'm still not sure I fully understand this genre, I've been reading First Legendary Beast Master and I'm caught up on it now, and I see differing opinions on whether it's part of the genre or not. Does anyone have any recommendations of stuff similar if you've read it? Not necessarily the beast stuff, but I like the progression of small fish big pond to big fish small pond, then repeat with a new pond and new levels of growth (low power continent -> high power continent -> immortal worlds -> divine worlds (at some point, story isn't there yet) ). Also the chaotic good MC who doesn't have any moral problems with killing any enemies or threats, but is a nice guy outside of that. Not a big fan of the asshole MCs in CN and KR stuff.

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The First Legendary Beast Master is a fascinating case of AI advertisements. PocketFM took the story, then had an AI generate a collection of very divergent 10+ minute long AI video advertisements for their platform. I watched the full ad, went to their store and found the actual version is totally different.

I can't even find the advertised video, but I did find a bunch of different ones with people complaining they aren't the advertisement



Anyway, First Legendary Beast Master might be in the "cultivation" genre. If it has stats and a somewhat rigid system, then it's in the LitRPG genre. The two are very similar and LitRPGs often start out as stat/system-heavy and then migrate to being more "cultivation". You can only add +1 strength so many times before your readers stop caring and you have to move the progression forward with more distinct concepts.

For a book recommendation, you might enjoy "Primal Hunter" which is one of the more popular LitRPGs and is definitely a zero-to-hero story with a morally neutral MC that is loyal to his friends, destructive to his enemies and apathetic to everyone else.

I finished book 2 of Hell Difficulty Tutorial and am partway into book 3, and ok, he's more tolerable now. Still a dick, but now also not quite as much of a dick, and you get used to his thought process.

I still think it is some non-native speaker due to him saying stuff like, "Is he cool? Is she maybe smart?" etc. all the time, and some of the idioms are definitely not common in America. But once you get used to it, you can just gloss over him saying the same shit endlessly ("That's a problem for future Nathaniel, screw that guy!"). And the fact that he never, ever even seems to be having a difficult time, as even when he barely wins something it is presented as if it is no big deal. He's the walking embodiment of "super easy, barely an inconvenience."

So I'm enjoying it more now, and since the books are pretty long and there are a bunch of them, this will keep me entertained at work for some time, so thumbs up from me. Unless something changes drastically I suppose.