I Am the Sorcerer King

People say this is like solo levelling, but no.

This guy has a space ship, has an insane amount of nuclear energy that can wipe a planet out, owns the moon, owns a country, holds relations with fantasy creatures with human intelligence, he ain’t limited in abilities from resurrecting your wiped out country to having the most intelligent AI technology with the intelligence that surpasses his, this guy is a sorcerer king with our modern technology at his finger tips, who’s gonna stop god lol.

Many would compare to solo leveling and the similarities are there. Pacing of the sorry was astrocious near the ending but it’s a pretty standard op MC type story. Read for action and cool fight scenes 🙂

It's nowhere similar to SL. If a sick mother is your only reason to compare this to SL then you haven't reading webnovel very long. A sick family member as a motivation for MC is like one of the most common trope, SL is not the one that start this trend, you can go back as far as The Legendary Moonlight Sculptor to get similar trope. You now what, why not compare it here?

Main character:

SL:
A regular human that is blessed with the ability to level up by accident in a double dungeon. The author would later change it so that he's always meant to have this power.

Personality-wise, he doesn't have one. At least at the beginning of the story he was capable of showing a range of emotions. But after getting strong, the only emotions are brooding and angry. He's basically a robot after he got strong. He does show some kind of emotions in the more comedic "scene", but his default aura is chunibyo. Also very vindictive.

IATSK:
The strongest wizard in his realm, he was reincarnated into modern South Korea where monsters, levels, and skills exist by the grace of a "system". He didn't have any memory of his previous life until he had an incident with a strong monster. Before this he was working in a support role for hunters, he then with his past life knowledge became a hunter.

Personality-wise, he's charming, he knows how to deal with people. He's decisive, smart, and careful. He likes to collect people and guide and build them, and people like him. He won't hesitate to destroy his enemies, but he's also quite open-minded and flexible to make deals with them when necessary.

Story:

SL:
Standard Korean light novel. Full of powering up, full of encountering enemies that came from nowhere, and is just right on his power level. Lots of deus ex machina. Many cringe scenes which focus too much on the "cool" level. Many important scenes were witnessed by many people, so they could praise him. The main plot line is non-existent until the middle of the story. Plot armor is strong.

IATSK:
Story is quite consistent. MC was curious but skeptical about the "system" from the beginning. This would be part of the main story until the end. There is no deus ex machina, everything happened as it is without any extra content to "spice" the story. Might be boring if you're not into it, to be honest. MC has a meticulous plan from the beginning and the story is about him finishing the steps of the plan. There is also some political element to the story. There is no real "bad guy" everyone is in the gray zone, with the exception of the last monster they fought, but that's just their nature, not being evil in my opinion.

MC plan is basically separated into 3 parts. Get strong; get people that he can trust and rely on, and support them; build influence. And he manages to do all that by the end of the story.

TLDR: It's a good story about a charming and smart wizard reincarnated into the modern world. Story is realistic but could become boring if you're not into it.

This is like solo leveling with some improvements, but the result is somehow much worse.
For one, the art is much worse. The characters are even worse than in solo leveling which is almost a feat. The world building is slightly better at first. For example, the logical conclusion that one of the hardest things about going to a different dimension is the completely alien environment.

The pace of the story is ridiculous though. It also suffers from making every other person in the world basically useless. All countries do the dumbest things and so on. It is annoying.

The MC is a pretty horrible person in many ways but also in that he doesn't care about human life pretty much at all. Why ? Because in his previous life, no one was nice to him and helped him become a demi-god, which he did in the end. Apparently he had no friends. I don't even know what to say to that. Honestly, if you live as long as he did and have no friends, maybe you are the problem ?

This manhwa suffers from the typical problems of its genre. When authors bring fantasy to Earth, as opposed to sending their protagonist to a fantasy world, they often insert their political views into the story as they tell a tale with real nations. This can be alright, if it's done tastefully and in moderation, but as of Chapter 52 I am left with the feeling of marinating in it. The "bad guy" nations are the usual suspects, and the Korea #1 nationalism that plagues such manhwa is, as always, cringe to people outside of Korea.

If you can get past that, then strap yourself down for mediocrity. The story starts off interesting, but rapidly becomes a snoozefest.

This seemed pretty good early on, and it was almost well written throughout.

But the word almost is in that sentence for a reason. Almost well written. Well written characters, well written powers, well written fights, well written world building.

But the plot and pacing were utter trash. The author has literally 0 grasp of the concept of Chekhov's Gun nor foreshadowing of any type. He doesn't seem to have any idea that you need to both set-up and pay off things. The following bit will be spoilers:

The dragon that he promises to see again in the second chapter... never shows up. At all. Throughout the entire story, all the way until he pretty much becomes all powerful, it never makes an appearance. Literally, the biggest bit of foreshadowing, a two-life promise to fight again... never even is relevant.

His mom having an incurable disease? Solved within the first few chapters. The hunter he rescues who promises him a favor? He doesn't meet her for over 100 chapters, and she never even reacts to seeing him again beyond "he looks familiar". At one point, a person claims her family will do anything to harm the MC and it shows a picture of his mother... and then he fights the family and nothing happens to his mom.

This is just how the story is. Every time, you think they are setting up something for later, but the author is just like "nah, I found a new shiny thing to focus on." Over and over. The more I thought about it while writing this, the lower my score dropped. Almost nothing that I wanted to see happen happened in the end; the finale was anticlimactic and kinda boring; we barely hear anything about his prior world despite all the foreshadowing that things were crossing over from it.

But honestly, the dragon thing is the most frustrating for me. Like seriously, you couldn't be arsed to fulfill the promise your entire manhua was based on!?

MC faces very few actual obstacles throughout, and the ending is quite abrupt.

There are interesting threads and characters that are introduced early, but vanish completely from the story, never to be seen again. So there was potential there, but it went unexplored.

Still, if all you want is a simple uncomplicated power fantasy, this is that.

Eh, I actually really liked this one. It’s pretty enjoyable, and the MC’s got his priorities straight and is likeable imo… really like his personality. Not psychopathic ruthless or chuunibuyo and also not a selfless hero. Though admittedly, yes it’s your typical op MC story, it ain’t half bad. Towards the end though it started feeling rushed and there were a bunch of loose ends…especially that last fight….like wtf?! It feels like we need a few more chapters to wrap things up, so I was surprised that that was the last chapter. Definitely a pity…

Luckily there isn’t a harem though, so there’s that at least.

Though admittedly, I don’t like how towards the end the male party members all left and only females are in the party….the saving grace is that at least he doesn’t have romantic relations with them….