by Keiichi Hikami and lack - ★½☆☆☆, 169 MynePages™ - MC is an overthinking, socially inept, gamer caricature. Or, more precisely, how non-gamers imagine gamers to be. Which is strange since the novel is full of real Elden Ring references that only someone who has played the game would know. On the other hand, it is written so wooden that I wouldn't be surprised if you told me the author was just repeating bullet points about the game he heard from someone else or if their only point of contact was reading the official guidebook. The prose around everything in-game reads like that or a press release. As if someone took the text from a guidebook and wrapped it with a barely-there frame story. So, instead of "Next go there and there..." it is "Wataru then told Reito, 'Next you need to go there and there...'". And the frame story is also questionable. This social wreck who gets flustered because a colleague talked to him is somehow supposed to be in the sales department of the company? Really? But because he is a Souls gamer and starts to see his job as the game, he now somehow becomes the sales genius?
<Peddler in Another World: I Can Go Back to My World Whenever I Want!> - Volume 13 by Hiiro Shimotsuki - ★★★★☆, 128 MynePages™ - Great self-contained volume. The story beats were predictable, but it was done very well, so I don't mind in the slightest.
- Volume 13 by Amagishi Hisaya - ★★★★½, 238 MynePages™ - Great volume. I don’t think there is currently anyone better at delivering emotional payoffs. Whenever they hit it feels earned. Since the romance is just dead in the water, it’s really great when a volume focuses on the other cast that isn’t as obtuse.
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