One of the best dungeon defense novels that I've read. The MC is not an edgelord, but he always does his analysis of what will gonna happen, planning, etc. The author gave solid enough reason for the MC to adapt quickly (which is to erase their emotions as a human and the memory of their relatives.). All in all, its a great read.

I feel like this novel tricked me. There’s just so much unnecessary information and details within the story that it tricked me into thinking it had good world building. But the more you read, the more you quickly realize a lot of it doesn’t actually matter.

So the first 20 chapters is our MC playing around and testing out his new found dungeon, which sounds like a great ol’ time. But the biggest issue is, 1 – he has nobody to interact with (so it’s all internal monologue), 2 – he’ll... more>> eventually level up and a lot of the monsters/traps/equipment become completely irrelevant very quickly. So it’s just 20 chapters of ‘telling’ you a lot of useless information.

Basically the story spends too much time with the MC weighing out his options and running through different scenarios in his head. I feel like I’m reading a strategy guide of a dungeon defence game rather than an actual story. <<less

Overall above average, but at the same time very disappointing.

The disappointment? It ditches most of the dungeon management and defense aspect after the first arc, and become more about the MC conquering other dungeons and human lands. It's not terrible at that, but it's not particularly amazing either.

Though, at least, it does have a colorful cast which isn't just a checklist of generic waifus (in fact, the harem shenanigans are minimal due to the author realizing he wouldn't be able to write them well enough to not make the story... more>> worse), and they aren't all super developed, but some are original and other do have some depth rather than being a one note joke. <<less

It's a fun dungeon-building novel with a reasonable MC. So far it's pretty predictable, but there have been a few unexpected situations. This is one of the few places where I think time-skips were actually done well, as they're used to skip the boring parts without introducing random drama for the sake of it. Overall it's a bit like a mix between total war shogun and warhammer, I highly recommend it if you like either of those games or just the genres in general.

An interesting novel mixing dungeon master & road to kingdom concept. The novel has great world setting where the MC, as a Demon King have to battle against humanity & other demon kings to survive.

A. Character Development:

MC is a cunning, calculating person, & may act cold. He likes to form theories in his mind (talking on his own).

... more>> This may be the greatest selling point of this novel, how he trampled over his enemies with his craftiness.

The story focus too much on the MC thus disregarding the other characters importance. Everything from decision making & management is done by MC (he may order someone to do, but ended up controlling them by himself). Even during war, he’ll just ended up ordering/controlling every single minor step of his subordinates. No flexibility for them to make change on the course of story.... And don’t hope for romance, only have pure belief (which reader may think as Teetee, but will not go beyond that). Tbh I dont think we have Heroine (s) yet.

B. World Building:

The setting of story is great, many details that can be expanded, like crafting new equipments & stuffs. The pace of war also great. But probably because author put too much focus on MC so the world going around him going so slow resulting in time-skip which we will have few times later in the story.

There are still many things left uncovered & promising,

Spoiler

New Rule of Party Restriction being lifted, Laplace’s true goal & mastermind, encounter with 12 of 13 Demon Kings, Chaos & Law outside Japan, etc.

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so this still has potential to become great novel. So just hope author still in a great spirit to continue this series as I can already see the series already reach 300+ch (longest chapter author ever wrote) but with few time-skips in latest chapter. <<less

Quite a few reviews already but I wanted to add my input.

Edit chapter 148: it has developed nicely, but quite alot of time skips. Dropoing the rating to 3/5 but it is still decent novel

I gave it 4/5 for it's entertainment value. Where I'm now on the story, it has reasonably well started world building, interesting premise amd believable MC. I am starting to look forward to side character interaction since monolgue thoughts can only go so far for me. If the side characters that will be introduced are well... more>> written I might give 5/5. Although part of it might be just because I have been waiting for new kingdom building fantasy that has ongoin translations :D realistically 4/5 seems to be the best this can do, but it can still drop lower like so many others when author starts taking shortcuts. <<less

Other reviews can tell you about the story. I will just tell you my impression.

First, the pace is excruciatingly slow. Why? Holy mother of infodumps. There are literally whole chapters that are infodumps. Like, the protagonist constantly goes through the workings of the system (yeah, we have a game-like system, or rather an RPG-like system) and it's f*cking tedious to read, especially when there are often 2+ such chapters in a row.

And I feel like a good two-thirds of the initial 30+ chapters are infodumps. When the action actually happens,... more>> it's boring. If you're the type of person who enjoys reading several gigabytes of a game setting, it may not be an issue for you, but this is not my cup of tea at all.

The protagonist is a typical loser doormat (I dunno, maybe I'm a bit overreacting... I may just be allergic to Japanese beta sh*t at this point). At the start, that is. Because his personality just made 18o inexplicably and unnaturally in early 30s (I mean chapter count). I'm still wondering why. Well, at least I can praise him for indeed being smart. At least math-smart. When I see all those numbers related to the setting, it's just tiring, and he can handle it.

There's not a single character I can feel any fondness for or interest in. The good thing is that this is just the start of the story, and it feels like the characters will develop in the future.

Side stories are tedious as well. Some are at least meaningful, but most of them are boring.

Overall, the problems is the horribly slow pace of this novel and an abhorrent lack of any interesting elements that would retain the readers. I mean, author-kun, damn it, just throw us readers a bone every now and then so we stick around... <<less