Night Ranger is a reasonably competent tranmigration into a game world that is actually real. The best part of the story is easily the vivid combat scenes, which relies on a MMORPG sensibility to drive the action. The fast pacing and excellent translation make at times, this novel can be enjoyable, but unfortunately, the world is inescapably shallow, which even at the best of times prevents the novel from ever being truly great, and at the worst of times, drives the novel into frustrating places.The world is just like the game he played, except when it's not. The main character remembers everything about the game down to the fiddliest bit, except when it's convenient for him not to. The system seems in-depth, but ultimately is obviously contrived around the main character like his subclass which would make no sense as a main class. Skills that would be obviously stupid in a game are purported to have existed in the game, such as a near-instakill skill that makes the user weak for months. There are niggling details when the author tries to bring in plots into a video game world. The MC's father was murdered by a slow poisoning. Here's the problem: In this world, you can fairly trivially cast "Cure Poison" and "Divination". Over the months he was slowly getting sicker, why didn't his father visit a cleric? And after discovering he was being poisoned, it would have been trivial to find the culprit. I'm a hundred chapters in, and every single character introduced so far feels like a sock puppet for the MC to interact with. Nobody feels real, they're all just NPCs waiting around for the MC to show up. The villains, in particular, have all these contrived plans that involve trying to kill the MC, but they often seem pointless. For example, one mastermind spends an enormous amount of money plotting to kill the MC because he has a treasure map onto his land. I can't help but wonder why he simply didn't take a small adventuring party there and simply take it. We keep being told how smart the MC's actions are, but it's clear that without plot armor, he'd die pretty much every other day. He consistently, repeatedly putting himself in mortal danger time and time again, by choice. Yet there's never any sense of danger at all because the MC is a cocky perfect hero because he's played a lot of video games. He's never afraid of death even when he's inches from it, and even though we're told he feels pain, it doesn't seem that way. There is an incredible amount of telling instead of showing. Worse, people know things they shouldn't. The MC concludes that other people don't gain experience for getting kills, but he literally just assumes that without any testing whatsoever. Some mook knows instantly the incredibly rare class of the MC (literally only 18 other people in the world with the class), but then a far more powerful, older, guy with far more access to knowledge has no idea what he is like two chapters later. For some bizzarre reason, despite seers with future sight knowing a world-shaking calamity is coming, they forget to tell anyone.The MC has a cross between xianxia and video game morals. One second he's thoughtlessly murdering mooks, the next he's sparing somebody who's betrayed him. Why? Because they're plot-centric. The MC keeps saying he doesn't kill pointlessly, but he does. All the time. Then the author tries to show him as ruthless, but it mostly just makes him evil and possibly insane. The MC looks at somebody and senses that they have strange eyes, so he kills them. Then he kills some peasant for giving him lip. Well, maybe they weren't a peasant, maybe he was a spy. Who knows? Not like the MC is going to bother to check when he mysteriously just knows. When it comes down to it, the MC sees people as bags of experience and loot. When his class trainer says "Okay, for the next step in your training, I need you to murder these five thieves that are pretty annoying because uh, they'll show off your night murdering skills" he doesn't stop and think "wait, is pick-pocketing really a capital crime?" Nope, he's got a quest to kill 5 people, so he kills 5 people. Amusing, since he later gets ragingly mad at someone else who is killing people to fulfill their advancement. I'm often frustrated by MCs that try to bring in modern world morality into brutish and violent worlds, but in this case, the MC shows less regard for human life than serial killers. His kill counts exceed that of most of the villains in the story, and include innocents, guards, and children. Bizzarrely, every day citizens expect him to be punished because in civilization there's clearly rule of law, but he routinely gets away with murder. You might say, "Might Makes Right
This is superb! I love transmigration, fantasy, action, and adventure stories. This one is such a complete package! The game like setting and the system were additions that got my interest the most. I like the MC, though he was thrown in a different world without any warning, still he remained strong. The plot is amazing. Looking forward for more.
Perfect! I have to say. The world-building, the characters, the fluidity, all of them are there. I would like to recommend it to all readers who enjoy Korean type dungeon story. I want to give you, the author a suggestion. I think you need to give the protagonist a more believable motive to hide his power, like a promise with someone important to him, an enemy he made in the past, the truth he can not share with anyone else, or his abnormalities that he fears to be realized by the others if it is known. It will give your novel a solid direction. good luck.
Lord Phenex becomes more enraged with the nonchalant answer and flames appear around him. Many back away gasping and clutching their throats from the intense heat, whilst others watched at how stupid he was acting.
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