I can here from the manga and would like to share my experience for those that went through this path.

I knew the plot prior, since the manga is ahead as of now, and went to read ahead in the novel raws. So, I thought to live my thoughts on this novel.

The novel starts off pretty slow. It goes into detail, which is something that is my cup of tea but might not be for others.

The main character is not some power house and I think this novel really highlights that.... more>> All he has is greater knowledge and interest in Dungeons. The rest of the way, he figures stuff out (one aspect of why this novels goes into greater detail).

The story is not made to make your blood boil, as its intended purpose is to share a world to its readers. I personally feel that this is more of a slice-of-life than an action packed novel.

My review maybe a little bias as I enjoy this novel. However, I hope that it aids potential readers to make a decision when picking up this novel. <<less

Edit: beginning - 1.5 stars. Later - ~3stars, I read some more and it gets better later on, but the beginning is quite poor and he still doesn't seem to care much, but he stops being so dumb (everyone else is still kinda dumb though) and the pace picks up. You could even just skim the start as it exists purely as an excuse for the premise of the story to exist.

It's pretty bad. Another fairly emotionless idiot MC who just sort of exists and doesn't seem to care he... more>> has been thrown into a new world. Lots of exposition flaws with "show, don't tell" syndrome being the main narrative form. We get told what is happening, but never really experience anything because why do that when you can just do a one month timeskip and tell us the MC sold his staff for a lot of money and is now being mocked relentless by random, faceless voices in the crowd for being "lucky boy".

His two companions, a dog man and cat girl are also brainless. When they aren't engaged in s*upid banter, they exist as an exposition device to explain the world to us (but not SHOW us, that would be interesting). Then we learn the entire world is also brainless because they treat white mages (healers) poorly because apparently a person who can heal, protect and literally bring you back to life aren't worthy of respect because they can't pewpew? Then they time-skip 30 damn floors of the dungeon, because seeing them learn how to work together and get to know one another would be as boring as exploring a new world.

This story is completely devoid of character and charm. <<less

Don't listen to midwits who evaluate literally everything in terms of "muh lore" and "muh development." Unfortunately for the world, the entirety of creative critique now has been forced (largely) into those two boxes, and people aren't properly equipped to describe the strengths of a floating concept story vs. A fixed one. Hence, when a story decides to make details expedient, it's automatically assumed as "bad writing."

See the review before me. A hack review by a hack. The type of person who calls MCs bland because they've got rubrics instead... more>> of a head on their shoulders. Unable to see that the manga largely exists as a love letter to the healing class in MMORPGs (which, by the way, I don't even like MMORPGs) and the bullsh*t they face, he's so s*upid he can't even recognize that the lore is just a reflection of that but parodied. Does he also play Phoenix Wright and complain about how it's absurd that you have to prove someone else guilty to get an innocent verdict for your client? Possibly, but if he doesn't it's just because Phoenix Wright has already been accepted popularly, and the type of person to write these milquetoast reviews usually lacks any courage in their convictions.

Despite what the good man zyzz says, some of us are NGMI. "Muh lore" idiot are the least likely to. <<less

A story about a college student who, after an impressive achievement in an almost-dead online game, gets transported to a fantasy world that runs of game logic. In this world, there is a Dungeon that's just like the one in the online game, and the main character is determined to clear it, thinking it would give him at least a clue on how to return to his world. But the process isn't so straightforward due to how this world's society works, with the main source of entertainment being the live... more>> footage from the Dungeon shown on Monitors throughout the hub city, and the economy running on the commercialization surrounding the exploring and looting of the Dungeon.

The text is written entirely in third-person, and is relatively simple throughout, with a catch that the regular use of MMORPG terms might throw off those who aren't familiar with them. The story starts at a pretty slow pace, with the first major arc being a slow burn and more personal conflict, ending in a climactic battle, and is followed by a lengthy downtime arc that sets up a much bigger scale of conflict. A lot of the time is spent detailing the game mechanics and team composition, which can feel like too much exposition for some, but will help non-gamers follow things more easily along the way.

So far, I've read up to the latest translated chapters of the WN (82) and the manga adaptation (40), and have read the original Japanese WN up to chapter 19.

The active translation by grounp "Divine Dao Library" has been done by 3 different translators so far. Chapters 1-24 are low quality, which omitted a handful of complicated paragraphs and is presumably MTL. Chapters 25-31 are mostly fine. Chapters from 32 onwards are relatively high quality, but might come off as excessively localized in some places.

There is also an earlier translation of the first 3 chapters by "Tseirp Translations, " which is mostly fine aside from a handful of glaring mistranslations.

My recommendation would be to read the manga adaptation up to chapter 17 (translation is bad, but it goes by fast because of the condensed pacing) then switch to WN chapter 32. Incidentally, this point is where the WN and LN/manga versions of the story start to diverge. <<less

Review as of chapter 3.

Quick recap, MC is an MMORPG player, whose game of choice is a dungeon-delving type. The game is going to close, so he decided to solo (with 4 secondary accounts) the dungeon till its last boss, perhaps part for pride and part because there had been noone who had done so.

Once he done so though, he got an invite... And simply sent to face the final boss again, in the flesh, alone, in his main account as a white mage/healer/priest/cleric. Suffice to say, he died.

The... more>> story proper then starts. There's barely any further information from the gods, who in the old Lore of the game was the maker of the Dungeon, and it was basically for fun.

So far, he has gotten two party members, but they were mostly forced on him, because of a kind of PR disaster, involving the fact that the Dungeon spits out dead adventurers with the most expensive item in their hands, and an auctioneer that forgot to keep his private information, well, private.

It is rather interesting, too bad the author has declined to allow further translation.

Well, if you can read moonrunes, go find the WN and read for yourself. Have fun. <<less

firstly, the novel has not ended yet, the last chapter on syosetsu has a link to the authors blogpage where there is a continuation.

as for the review :

for the most part the story is interesting with an good enough focus on the skill mechanics. The characters are OK, but sometimes it feels like the thought process of the characters are a bit lacking. Honestly though, the MC is strong but for the most part isnt depicted as a mary sue.

it feels like the story arc resolutions are a... more>> bit too easily resolved, but I guess its a bit more lighthearted type of novel.

When it comes to romance, there are hints here and there, but the MC doesnt act on them and it aligns with his goals and reasoning, which is welcome. <<less

This has a bit horrible start. First is the MC is not really OP, he almost started from the bottom when he came from another world. This made the beginning of the story a uninteresting. Furthermore, the translation is not that good, not on the beginning chapters but a bit after that. It took a while before it gotten decent.

Now this story surprised me, because despite being a dungeon crawling story, the novel revolves more on strategies and teamworks. There are also other very interesting things that happens along the... more>> way. This is why after I passed on the first arc, where the MC managed to regain his reputation, it's hard to stop reading. One thing I noticed here, is the MC is really a human. Despite acting as if he's cool with it, he hold grudges, a bit coward, etc.

All I can say that this is worthy to read, like the underrated "Welcome to the Impregnable Demon King Castle". To be honest, feels like that one is better, but there's really a lot of similarity between the two. The dungeon crawling became a form of entertainment, and there's a lot of competition. Though the latter story also have many interesting characters, and better human relationships.

Welp, before I end this short review. I did some research regarding the "ending" seeing one of the reviews here, even though this was not tagged as completed. And I noticed that the author stopped writing on narou and continued it on his blog.

Spoiler

The MC will go back to another world again, after years has passed, and few of his clan members leave to join the other. Though looks like the MC really break the relationships of their clan.

[collapse]

I'm gonna try to continue reading this through MTL, since there's a lot to look forward in the story. This is something I really recommend to those who don't like overly serious novel but very decent and will make you invested on the story. It has a weak start with bad translation, but once you passed that, the story started to picked up in a good pace and development. <<less

I like it. A lot. As much as I want to say why I like it, there's one thing overriding that feeling.

Time.

Current release is one chapter a week. There are 659 RAW chapters so far with 243 translated chapters and 416 chapters that are yet to be translated. At this pace, it'll take 8 years to catch up to where the novel is at the time of writing this.

I believe it's important to know this before you get invested because if the current schedule (which is impressively consistent) remains... more>> the same, it might be a decade before you get any closure.

If you're cool with that, I recommend it. <<less

A lot of isekais tend to live and die by their novelty. Maid roleplay, spider roleplay, slime roleplay, sword roleplay, time loop roleplay, etc. etc.; even when the plot and characters don't hold up, the authors at least try to venture into unexplored territory.

There are also those isekais which focus on characterization. Even if the main characters are total losers, slow in the head or pumped full of testosterone, over time you can tell the author is trying to develop them properly.

Of course, that isn't the only approach - there's... more>> always literary techniques. As observed in decades of western literature, you can succeed with the most tried-and-true premises and personalities so long as the writing around them, the scenery, and the MC's perception of the world is evocative enough. After all, that strong imagery is how genre fiction like DnD, a product of hours of passion, becomes a lasting phenomenon.

With that said, the novelty in this series is... a standard RPG party. The literary techniques and descriptive/emotive language are non-existent. The character development is limited to pure exposition, in a 'he was sad' kind of way. And worldbuilding? What is that? Is it tasty?

Right. This story doesn't just fail to exceed the sum of its parts - it barely has any parts in the first place. The monsters aren't scary. The penalties aren't serious. The fights aren't intense. The characters aren't memorable. The motivations aren't deep. The skills are 'magic missile' tier of interesting. It's almost as though the high rating is a symptom of how little remaining there is to do wrong, rather than what little is actually done right.

Try to evaluate the story as a slice of life love letter to the likes of DnD and similar genre fiction, and you'll find that it still falls short with how uninspired it is. Especially given its simple language and dialogue, it's the kind of thing that any gamer could write. And even if that's the appeal, you only need to go to fanfiction. net to find a hundred better love letters.

Even without considering character personalities and novelty, there are a billion ways this could've been even slightly more interesting - more vivid imagery and descriptions, higher stakes, or even the slightest bit of comedy - and somehow the author dodged them all. Maybe he should've chosen a rogue class instead of healer.

It gets better after the new translator joins somewhere around c30, along with the introduction of a few inferiority complexes which flesh out a bunch of characters. But for the most part, it's a story as bland as water-flavoured curry which will leave you thinking, "Wait, isn't this just water...?" <<less

This is a generic novel with bad executions.

First of all, the lack of details in this novel is very annoying. A lot of the things are just skipped over. When Garm took our MC to explore around, we got no explaination on the location, appearance, and general culture of the area. Instead, all of it are skipped over simply with "A month passed since Tsutomu requested for Garm to escort him and to impart knowledge to him." That's it.

The character development are skipped over along with the world building too.... more>> When the month passed since Garm escorted our MC, the MC and the two party members obviously has gone closer with each other, but it just seems out of place, as we didn't get too see how they got to that point. Just think about it, from complete strangers in one chapter to people who seems like half-friends in the next one.

The currency are not explained either. The MC uses magic stones and G for trading, both of them are the general currency, but we are given no explanation on how much G equals one small magic stone.

The general discrimination against healers does not make sense. Healers are obviously an extremely efficient way to save money, in chapter 9, we got an explanation on green potion in that it's very expensive. So using healers can save you a lot of money. Of course, a lot of a healer's uses are downplayed by the fact that you can't die in a dungeon, but a healer's resurrection magic are still essential for an extensive dive in the dungeon. Besides, the healers are also able to provide significant buffs are we have gotten from chapter 8.

The battles are also garbage. There is absolutely no tension to the battle, the MC also obviously knows the weakness of the monsters, but we got no explanation on what those weaknesses are. The appearance of the monster are only vaguely described, so we have no idea on how they actually look either. The battles can be explained as "XXX did the tanking, XXX did the attacking, and I did the healing, and we won".

There is also the price of the "best weapon ever discovered in the dungeon currently". That item only sold for 30 million G, and our MC can make 250 million G in a 4 days at floor 40. The highest floor people got to in that world is 59, which later increased to 60. Considering that, a good weapon is undoubtedly needed to advance floors, but the "best weapon ever discovered in the dungeon currently" only sold for 30 million, keep in mind that an adventurer in floor 40 can make 250 million in 4 days, which means that weapon only sold for an amount that is less than what an adventure on floor 40 makes in 1 day.

The starting is also badly executed, the MC should have learned more of the world before he decided to sold his cane. He already know that his cane is the "best weapon ever discovered in the dungeon currently" from Amy. Of course, he'll have to sell it in the end whether he like it or not, but I feel like the author can polish the MC's character more from just adding that small detail.

The characters are not well done. The MC got no personality, no emotion, and a shallow goal. The side characters are only used for useless banters, and for battles.

There is nothing in the characters, world, or the plot that makes me want to read this novel. 90% of the contents are skippable, with no real consequence later in the novel as they will never be brought up anyway. The details are so lacking that you can't even form a hypothesis on the world, it just seems like the author is openly telling you to reading this novel with half your brains shut off. <<less