- #1
First - the basic premise in the title, "Hero's friend", feels like a self-insert fanfic along the lines of "I am so great, I am helping him so much, also he adores me". There is no characterisation neither for Hero nor for MC, so it's just an empty and pointlessly sweet interaction, it is very unpleasant to read.There are no side characters, every single one just fills in their respective role - "Prince", "Merchant", "Thief" with just a couple of lines each.Author makes brave attempts at worldbuilding... which results in a hideous amalgamation of random trivia, gradually increasing in frequency. It might not be a big percentage of text, but it feels so daunting that it deserves its own content warning instead of praise.The only battle in the very beginning could've been fairly entertaining if not for author boasting his history knowledge with another useless trivia.There is basically no storytelling, just author in the guise of MC roughly saying the direction the plot should go in, awkwardly inserted with short actions/dialogues. Writing itself isn't bad, just very unbalanced towards describing the story instead of actually telling it.In the end it is just too boring. I couldn't be invested or even slightly interested, so I do not recommend it.
