- #1
This is a very good story with a very interesting setting. The romance is bad though.The core draw is that MC is on hell difficulty, and to survive it he had to dump all his points into a damage bonus against demons. So against demons he's more or less OP power tripping, and for everything else (like fighting his classmates) he's nearly the worst (except he improves this over time through sheer effort). MC is also incredibly level headed and moderately crafty, which is nice. He's no genius manipulator, but he uses his information of the game to his advantage quite well.The stats system (well really the system in general) is pretty unique, and it's actually focused on magic. I'm so tired of mages punching people with magic, please cast spells. He casts spells. There's quite a bit of wishy-washyness in the system, mostly about what titles / elements a person can have, which makes it less grounded than it could be, but it's decidedly not deus-ex-stat bonuses.The only gripe I have is the harem/romance element. It's not that I dislike them inherently, its that the story (eventually) follows the strategy of several teen girls who should be in therapy throwing themselves at the stone-faced protagonist who's inner monologue is more or less "i mean they are attractive but crazy so i'll just stand here this is a solution." chapters are dedicated to this. It is insufferable. He refuses to reciprocate for good reason (the world may end in 1-2 years, or 3-5 business days honestly), but he doesn't draw any boundaries to the point that the target audience is painfully apparent.The author is also vaguely trying to make MC be both cute and cool (he's short & kinda pretty, but gets buff as hell), and I don't know why. It's not like any girl likes him for his physical appearance, they like him because uhhhhh let's see: slept nearby while camping (????), first ever friend, showed powerful magic, and for the likely actual FL, is a good conversationalist and has an eldrich thing vibing where his soul should be.