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Hellmode ~A Hardcore Gamer Becomes Peerless in Another World with Retro Game Settings~
Type
Web Novel (JP)
Genre
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Rating(3.8 / 5.0, 290 votes)
5    53% (155 votes)
4    9% (27 votes)
3    15% (44 votes)
2    8% (23 votes)
1    14% (41 votes)
Language
Support Book (#ad)
Author(s)
One entry per line
Artist(s)
One entry per line
Year
Example: 2012
2019
Status in COO
Status in Country of Origin. One entry per line
731 Chapters (ongoing) - WN 12 Volumes
11 LN Volumes (ongoing)
Licensed
Yes
Completely Translated
No
Original Publisher
One entry per line
English Publisher
One entry per line
Release Frequency
Every 0.3 Day(s)
Activity Stats
[Graph]
Weekly Rank: #792
Monthly Rank: #356
All Time Rank: #302
Reading List
[Graph]
On 6086 Reading Lists
Monthly Rank: #658
All Time Rank: #1131

Description

Links are NOT allowed. Format your description nicely so people can easily read them. Please use proper spacing and paragraphs.

Kenichi Yamada was a 35-year-old salaryman. As a hardcore game enthusiast, he was saddened by the modern trend towards casual games.

So, when a site claimed to be “for people who like to do things the hard way,” he just couldn’t resist. Thus, he was reincarnated into another world as Allen, playing on Hell Mode.

This is fantasy light novel about Allen’s journey as a summoner.

Reincarnated as a serf, he starts from nothing.

His journey begins with absolutely no knowledge of the world around him, just like those games he played 10, 20 years ago.

Associated Names
One entry per line
Hell Mode: Yarikomi Suki No Gamer Wa Haisettei No Isekai De Musou Suru
Hellmode ~Gamer Who Likes to Speedrun Becomes Peerless in a Parallel World with Obsolete Setting~
Hell Mode ~The Hardcore Gamer Dominates in Another World with Garbage Balancing~
ヘルモード ～やり込み好きのゲーマーは廃設定の異世界で無双する～
Related Series
N/A
Recommendations
Garbage Brave: Isekai Ni Shoukan Sare Suterareta Yuusha No Fukushuu Monogatari (LN) (3)
Moto Sekai Ichi’i no Sub-chara Ikusei Nikki (2)
I Was Reborn, but I Was Told That the Popular Standard Skills Were No Good, so I Chose the Skill of Collecting [Title] (2)
Going to Another World on Your Own! ～a Story That Begins With a Not-so-sweet Upbringing (2)
SSS-Class Suicide Hunter (1)
Garbage Brave: Isekai Ni Shoukan Sare Suterareta Yuusha No Fukushuu Monogatari (WN) (1)
Recommendation Lists
  1. good Harem
  2. Good Novels (True Harem ENding)
  3. Manga watch list
  4. thesauce
  5. Current Reads

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44 Reviews sorted by


Seregosa
Seregosa rated it
February 4, 2025
Status: v8
I read the LN version which is usually more high quality and better than the fan translation (with some exceptions), so I believe I got the full experience.

The first 4 volumes are decent, I'd give it a 3.5/5 or 4/5 at that point. That's up to and including the sudden and short-lived "war" where the team is sent out to an elven country.

Up to that point, it wasn't amazing but it was a pretty fun read with allen doing his best leveling up and exploring his class and capabilities and... more>> making friends as well as overcoming some random small trials here and there.

The thing is that the author isn't exploring the possibilities, expanding the story and changing things up. Relationships are shallow and feel incredibly artificial since Allen never gives any girl a second thought nor any other person for that matter, there's literally zero romance worth mentioning other than the girls clearly having a thing for him but never showing it much. Allen has no real goals except "Yeah, kinda want to protect the people close to me and kinda want to grind and become stronger because it's fun" which ends up also feeling so lackluster when his goal, given the setting of the story, should be more along the lines of exploring his class to the fullest and seeing how powerful he can be and fighting the most difficult battles with the minor side goal of protecting people he cares about, but it's not.

The setting overall couldn't be more average or even below average. Some random demon lord cornering the world with a very extended battle for various halfhearted reasons, gods that for some reason treat things like a computer game down to weird mechanics that use some intangible power to offset damage (like endurance being like some power creates a membrane or interferes with the strike instead of the being's body becoming more powerful) and for some reason despite being in control of this, they can't seem to debuff the demon lord's army even while the demon lord's army buffed every monster in the world by a rank. Neither side's actions make any real sense no matter how you look at it, no amount of asspull could explain it satisfactorily.

Then there's the characters in general. I mean, damn, just how flat can characters be? Every single character has about one single trait and one single type of action, or maybe two if the author's generous, that they repeat over and over. The protagonist's childhood friend is s*upid and brawny yet wants to protect people, the other childhood friend is more your average dude in intelligence but also wants to protect people, the elf is just kinda clumsy and submissive and doesn't have any real opinions, the healer just wants money yet is extremely kind, the dwarf was supposed to be very merry at but then turns into a mere yes-man that likes to cry when treated well.

Everything else can be somehow overlooked without ruining the fun too much, but the characters break this novel. It's fine until volume 4 because we're still at a stage of introducing the main characters at that point, they get some fleshing out and so on, but after that, we notice how every single discussion, every single chapter, is just the same thing again and again. The characters act the same every time they show up, say roughly the same things with different words, do the same things in different situations and in general never truly develop. Hell, one barely even notices them in the story, they don't seem important despite being main characters. Oh, and the summons are just named "Summon A, Summon B, Summon C" and so on, which makes them feel mechanical and also hard to keep track of. Why not name them "Orochi" "Dragon" "Grasshopper" instead, readers can keep track of which is what rank.

We also never get to see any real results from his actions, because he downplays every single thing he does, gives away credit and never uses his hard-earned privileges. Money doesn't matter, status doesn't matter and so on. I mean, this stuff is supposed to be a big part of developing the story and characters, right? Getting more money and using it for something other than just gear and the same stones as before but more expensive, getting status and using it to change how he interacts with others, like getting his way and one-upping annoying nobles, having others treat him differently and creating a feeling of progression. But none of that happens because the author thinks it's cool (and easy to write) if things never really change and he pretends to be above all worldly things.

Oh, and this isn't hell mode, this is normal mode where only he needs more exp than anyone else yet has none of the restrictions on levels etc so he just needs to grind, which is repetitive and boring but easy, after that he just ends up stronger than everyone else and keeps on widening the gap (though the author tries to make him less OP by introducing new stuff to not make his party members obsolete a third into the story, which makes it all feel so not worth it). So, his effort ends up feeling pretty useless, especially as earlier on, the author tried to show that the protagonist was underpowered despite his effort where, for example, a mere child with a 1 month dungeon experience was way more powerful than him with 8-9 years of constant grind, but then when he finally surpasses everyone's level lock, the author keeps on introducing features to make other stronger so they can keep up. The author seems to be someone who pretends to know games and game terms but clearly doesn't.

To be honest, it just feels incredibly unearned when mere MP and resource depletion is all it takes to grow endlessly stronger (along with some easy to kill monsters) and so dull when almost everyone is at the level cap because it's super easy to get there especially with how much exp is earned despite doing nothing, they should just bring everyone in the world into the dungeons and carry them to make the entire world more powerful, make the workers more healthy, efficient, powerful and so on, leading to a far more prosperous kingdom. But for some reason, which is basically just the author ignoring obvious flaws in his setting, everyone except some adventurers or other people like that is at level 1 when you can level up multiple times from a single monster, in a world like that, it's obvious that getting carried for a few or a few dozen levels would be an obvious rite of passage.

Honestly, 2/5 is me being generous because the first 4 volumes were an acceptable time waster.

Just wanted to mention that the LN and WN seems to be quite different in basic settings, the author seemingly tried to fix mistakes but didn't succeed, read another review for example that mentions level cap of 50 (60 in the LN), the protagonist's class being 7 star (8 star in LN) and clearly hell mode has a higher level cap there or something. Honestly the rest of that review's spoiler only shows how the author isn't making a coherent story but just making things up as he goes along and the result isn't pretty. <<less
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FrodosBeutel
FrodosBeutel rated it
March 23, 2023
Status: v6c312
I feel like the author put things people like and put them all in a story. And I kinda like it.

Most prominant Tags (No order) : Weak to strong, Academy, Dungeon, Politics, War, Reincarnation, Level System, Summoning Magic.

Even though this novel has the "Harem" tag, I don't really see any harem. So if you don't like harem you don't have to avoid this novel.

Why I only gave 4 stars is because the writing style is not the best. The 3 main things are:

  1. Sudden situation Jumps. You are in Situtaion A and suddenly in Situaion B and it sometimes can be hard to follow.
  2. You have to guess from the content of what someone is saying, who is saying it. It is like "xxx" "yyy" "zzz" but it doesn't say who is saying it. It makes it sometimes hard to read.
  3. Sudden time skips. First is situation A then Situation B. And in the middle of Situation B is written "It is 3 days since situation A happened" even though it feels the situations happened back to back.
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jokepachi
jokepachi rated it
February 28, 2023
Status: v9c448
Finally caught up to the latest chapter 448... and I can say this series Average at BEST, however it's subpar majority of the time. Good god, is Allen some kind of automaton AI in his past life and not some Japanese guy? Yeah, he says he cares about his parents, his siblings and other people but reading through everything it just feels like things you just say without much though like "oh, it look like it's going to rain to today" or "hm, this ketchups' spicy" the only thing ever... more>> in his mind is Levelgrindlevelgrindlevelgrind I wonder if he really looks at the people around him as "real people" and not just NPC's that are just put there for him Level-up for the sake of Levelling-up...

Harem? Or maybe even Romance? You can forget that it's highly unlikely. With how he is, he's kind of at the level of IS's Ichika Orimura's level of denseness, so yeah. Not happening. <<less
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Kekkan Seihin
Kekkan Seihin rated it
February 18, 2023
Status: v5
A truly MID series, more on the positive side of the spectrum rather then the negative, but still MID. The 1st and 2nd volumes were pretty fun, but it gets pretty boring after that. There's too many characters, and they are as bland as they can be. Half of them are truly arbitrary and forced, and all of them are 100% formulaic in a very simplistic way.
3 Likes · Like Permalink | Report
GoldSweeper
GoldSweeper rated it
September 28, 2022
Status: v6c325
Better than expected. Had thought that it would be streamlined to boredom but author actually takes time to expand on the world building and the surrounding circumstances.

The main issue I find with the story is that the MC seems to be abit soft towards the injustices done towards him. I had expected a more hardline approach towards the Kings when they try to take advantage of him and hinder his progress.

The second issue is the so called "modes". Although it is explained at the start that the normal / easy... more>> mode is like the base mode it takes a while to actually expound that the base mode is like the demo game. Hard mode is the full game and hell mode is the full game with all dlcs. So rather than saying it is a difficulty setting its more like at what point do you get softlocked in the game which can be a huge c*ckblock when you are trying to progress.

All in all its actually quite good although I am still hoping it doesn't devolve into generic ending. <<less
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SilverFox99
SilverFox99 rated it
March 1, 2022
Status: v3c199
The novel is quite slow, though its refreshing as it explores things that usually are not explored in the usual isekai and sometimes it can takes an unexpected turn. As for those who loves training arc or just see the MC grows, this novel is really satisfying. While it take a long time for him to grow, it feels really satisfying once he did.
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slurm
slurm rated it
November 26, 2021
Status: --
I cant stand the subservient beta male that the MC is. He is already handicapped by choosing hellmode and decides to make things harder on himself constantly. It just frustrating how pathetic he seems even though he does the "impossible" only to lose to those who cant do the impossible
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Bobwillrule
Bobwillrule rated it
August 12, 2021
Status: --
This book is the your average isekai trope thing.

... more>>
Spoiler

MC goes to random website and gets transferred to another world. The abilities are pretty ordinary, like MC summon f rank beasts at first and then E rank and so on.

[collapse]

But what's different is that the MC doesn't become op quickly it takes time and chapters for him to gain power. The thing is, sometimes it gets a bit too slow for me, and it becomes boring (maybe I need to work on my patience.)

I would say the story is kinda plain but also not tr*sh. Somewhere between mediocre and good. Overall read if you don't have anything else to read, but definitely prioritize this over those other tr*shy isekai out there. (I'm not an isekai hater) <<less
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Benjam35
Benjam35 rated it
July 9, 2021
Status: c57
The things I like about this are many. The main characters completion attitude, the way he uses knowledge, the way he needs to build up to become powerful. All of these things are great. If you simply like it when people are immediately powerful this book is not for you. If you like the grind it is for you. I just hope it doesn't turn weird as time goes on like so many others
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Spiritogre
Spiritogre rated it
August 1, 2023
Status: vol. 6
When I started reading this I wasn’t so sure if it’s good. The first volume is a tad boring at times which is very common for a story with a MC reincarnated as a baby. The “toddler years” are rarely a fun read since it’s more or less 100 percent slice of life of a little albeit unique child.

Also the “hell mode” here isn’t really a hell mode since everyone else is in normal mode, meaning the monsters are not stronger for him, only the MC needs 100 times the... more>> XP to level up. Also his level cap is higher thanks to the hell mode so in the end he can be much stronger than people in normal mode... if he ever reaches that point, that is.

The real actions starts in the middle of volume 2 and from there it is a real fun read with each volume getting more intense. In volume 3 it’s about conquering dungeons and in volume 4 the war for the world finally takes off.

Each volume covers one arc of the webnovel which makes them longer than usual light novels, almost double the length of most ordinary light novels.

So far I don’t get the harem tag, sure, there are a few girls around him but also the same amount of guys (actually quite more guys in ordinary life interactions), even his party is about 50:50. <<less
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wandarer
wandarer rated it
June 22, 2022
Status: Completed
The Overlord and SAO that I wanted.

THIS is what game-based fantasy should be. A working stats, big brainer moves from characters, GIGACHAD MC. DAAANGGG BOII, MY HEART NEVER RACED SO FAST READING A NOVEL BEFORE (it was vol 2 when allen stood his ground against that viscount's men).

what I really like about this novel is that you feel like you're reading a streamer's final fantasy run turned into a novel, and it included their strats. the attention to details is just amazing; Monsters are actually spawned, the 'world' is based... more>> on numbers, there's cause and effects on every actions.

Oh, and I like how things are handled. like when Allen's grinding in a dungeon. Normally, I'd sleep whenever a dungeon is introduced in a novel. why? cuz most novels cared only about levelling up and only focusing on other objectives. in Hell Mode tho, it isn't. The author put his focus into the story development instead of the objective.

my fav quote in this novel: "Stats don't lie"

and I saw a review on how slow it is. surely he likes it fast haha.... aaaaah.... what does he read anyway? Reincarnated Assassin? oops, I might trigger the whole fanbase here.

p.s. if you like Hell Mode, might wanna try "Min-Maxing my TRPG Build". just... dont quit until you read the 3rd vol. And "Outer Ragna". it's susly similar to it 4r. <<less
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lgnwls
lgnwls rated it
April 15, 2022
Status: c231
It was pretty good. I like how the author looks at different aspects such as touching on the political and then switching to training and then switching to fighting in and covering kind of world building basically.
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hose246
hose246 rated it
April 8, 2022
Status: c126
The start of this novel is pretty good, with the leveling and stuff. But the author completely butchered his characters.

Honestly tho, when this novel first started, I thought it's gonna be an above average grinding novel. Which it is at the start, and also at the later part, just without the above average title.

The leveling is slow but entertaining, I understand why people might hate it because it's actually pretty slow. But it being slow also make you feel a sense of accomplishment when the skills finally leveled. So there's... more>> no problem for me on that part.

The problem starts when the character introduced the side characters. But tbh, they don't even feel like side characters, they felt more like walking-talking mannequins with no personality. Whatever little personality the characters have at the start got completely erased by the author during the academy arc.

There's also the problem with the events that happened in the story. A lot of them just felt forced and incomprehensible. Like with the demon war thingy. Why are the countries hiding this war from the general public? The reasons the author provided is too little to actually be reasons. And there's also the part where the protagonist went through something similar to a post-nut clarity with his "Oh, so I'm summoned to this world to end the demon war". Like, bruh, that's just so d*mn random.

The author also ignored many details during the writing of the novel, and I'm too lazy to list them out.

The only reason I'm giving this a two star is because I actually enjoyed the first 100 something chapters albeit only slightly and tentatively. <<less
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Chaosrune
Chaosrune rated it
June 28, 2021
Status: c21
Super boring story, the first 20 chapters are a big snorefest with the most interesting stuff happening to his childhood friend.

Really generic plot development, with everyone thinking that the MC has no potential, super gifted friend. There is nothing special about the story.

Maybe in another 100 chapters or so the story could be great, but at this point it's another painfully generic isekai story
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Ixcez
Ixcez rated it
August 6, 2024
Status: --
As some have already mentioned this story suffers from the fact that it starts out as focused around being a sort of lit rpg with a heavy focus on the MC growing stronger, getting new summons and so on. Later on it feels like the author either wanted to make a change or for whatever reason toned it down a bit. There is also quite a bit of time skips of parts that might have been interesting but was just skipped and then summarized.

The author also for some reason when... more>> the MC + gang is fighting "important" bad guys they often get away because of the cliche MC + gang just watches as the bad guys does whatever or uses talk-no-jutsu before running away. The author also gives the MC + summons some very overpowered skills but for some reason seem to have no idea how OP the skills actually are or how to use them in battle. For instance one of the MC's summons can use teleportation but it comes with the limitation of needing to put down a nest and then there is a long cooldown after each teleporation. However the MC is able to almost endlessly keep summoning new summons with the ability to teleport so in a battle he could easily summon multiple of them and have them put nests around for teleportation the teleporation also works on both allies and enemies so he could easily split up enemies by teleporting them away or moving his own summons or allies around the battlefield. MC never does this and instead the teleportation is only ever used to travel to far away places since there is no limitation on the teleporation distance only that a nest was put down in advance.

Some random stuff

Spoiler

Also the whole "hell mode" part in the title is pretty missleading since basically the world setting is that basically everyone is born in "normal mode" this gives them a lvl cap of 50 they also get a rare skill for free and they get a class that is ranked 1-5 stars, the more stars the more powerful the class, better skills, more stats and so on, however, you can advance in your class with the help of god and each time you advance your lvl resets to 1 and you lose the class skills however all the stats you've earned are retained so someone going from a 1 star job to a 5 star job would be many times stronger then someone starting at a 5 star job, but the author implemented at least for now that someone can only go up 2 stars in total.

Hard mode has a lvl cap of 80 and get's a bonus skill and seemingly get a class that is ranked 3-6 stars and all the demons are on this mode. No one has "hell mode" before the MC but what it does is allow someone to lvl endlessly but they get no free bonus skill to start with MC is however given a ranked 7 star job called summoner because he was given the choice between two 6 star jobs Hero King and Demon King, MC tried to pick Demon King so the god summoning him created the summoner job to make MC pick that instead on the spot.

There is some stuff later on about how the MC can't get summons when lvling up cause the god hasn't been able to update the summoner job enough and MC is lvling to fast. There is also this whole spiel about how only the creator god that summoned the MC can make someone enter the hell mode and how other powerful gods can only push someone into hard mode but for some reason the demon king somehow manged to pull absorb when being given his normal skill from the gatcha, basically everyone is given a random skill which should be rare or normal depending on their mode as mentioned. So using the skill the demon king absorbs a living god into himself and somehow pushes through hard mode into hell mode. It's kinda over the top in my mind since doing that is repeatedly mentioned as being something only the most powerful creator god can do and then the demon king which is a reccuring thing in this world, just cause he got absorb from the skill gatcha somehow is becoming stronger then the gods controlling the world. But yeah in short hell mode isn't so much hell mode as it's just picking to play on a mode that let's you grow powerful endlessly your just not as strong as the others to start with since they all get a free powerful skill.

[collapse]
<<less
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Dennamen
Dennamen rated it
December 11, 2023
Status: v3c104
I guess first two volumes are okay, not long nor short, enough to lead from prologue to culmination at one point on the plot.

If it were like 20 chapter long, it would be unimmersive as konosuba-like novels, and any longer felt like slice of life.
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animefan61082
animefan61082 rated it
January 27, 2023
Status: c1
I like the story the and character, but the only problem is the author. It about the power scaling

The author literally make the MC weak, like literally, the MC who is hell mode doesn't get something, yea it all hell mode and it all hard, but at least give him something.

while other characters who are normal mode gets buffs, and get very good weapon. While that MC doesn't get nothing.

Like he also got the worst divide skill, [creation] skill, divide skill. I thought it was good, but is suck, it... more>> not even a creation, it kinda is but not at the same time. It like crafting in Minecraft where he needs stuff to buff his monsters, he need a lot of stuff just for to make his monsters to get stronger or to get a skill for his monsters.

Not a creation at all, he should have name the skill different, like [crafting-adding] or [update, transformation] which he kinda has something similar. Like changing jobs, But the skill suck. Creation is something to create, not adding or something like that which was the skill and it suck.

Sometimes the power scale doesn't match up, the MC is strong without God's/goddesses blessings, while the other characters have it, and they also change jobs like 5 time. And the MC still the strongest. Like huh?

So 3/5 <<less
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PeaNutZ
PeaNutZ rated it
September 21, 2022
Status: --
I don't see the hellmode being in play (aside from being born as Serf), but that summoner class who has more star then even swordsman is hella op tho, not to mention he can summon several tiger/big cats/whatever it is and completely screw the enemies (he also get increased stats based on his summoned beast if im not wrong)
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whitenight2013
whitenight2013 rated it
June 24, 2022
Status: c267
This novel likes to get straight to the point which is good and bad. On the one hand, it is very refreshing to not need several chapters devoted to nothing.

... more>>
Spoiler

This big war ends, and the MC is just, "yeah, im outta here". No chapter of everyone thanking the MC and praising him.

[collapse]

It really feels like the MC is trying to speed run this life and cuts out most of the stuff that would eat up time. Because of this though, a lot of the side characters feel underdeveloped. This isn't a problem in volumeb1, but from 2 on, you do feel like things could use a bit more flourish.

It is also neat how each volume is completely different from the ones before it. Each volume has a change in location with a different goal in mind. It keeps things from falling into a rut and feeling samey. It also means if there is something you don't like or feel like the story isn't doing well, (like politics or village building), you can rest assured that the plot will move on to something else. <<less
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IsekaiDude
IsekaiDude rated it
March 28, 2022
Status: v3c105
unexpectedly good, the story is consistent and you have no deus ex machina, the story give you all the information and everything that the main character can do at the moment, because of that even when he struggles if you stop to think of a solution for his problem you can pretty much predict what he will do, and that's not a bad thing. If you like Jrpg you will probably like this novel
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