They say God created the Earth in six days. Highly advanced invaders, calling themselves Admins, destroyed Earth’s civilization and part of its biosphere in a single day.
People had always considered their minerals to be the most valuable material on Earth. They quickly learned how wrong they’d been. People turned out to be the most valuable material, or rather, the substance that could be produced from them.
Intellectum was a liquid so potent that a drop of it could bestow any creature or thing with sentience. It could make all sorts of objects smart, strong, and infuse them with magic.
The Admins gave the three hundred million survivors a slim chance to improve their lot in life through the Global Game. Though the Earthlings were supposed to breed in special farms in order to produce more Intellectum, at least they hadn’t been deprived of their right to fight back.
My Opinion: 237 pages, $3.99, Available On Kindle Unlimited
This is a RPG Apocalypse story translated from Russian and like other reviews have mentioned, it has some translations issues. I’ve read worse translations and it’s not like the words are incorrect, just that they are strung together oddly enough that it makes understanding them challenging.
The story is about a guy, our main character (MC), who had lost the use of his legs in a childhood car crash, now grown up, who is involved in another catastrophe. This time though, it's an RPG Apocalypse that affects the entire world. He himself is chosen as a savior and given special bonuses and items as well as hints about what is happening in the world. Not only does the MC have his body fixed, but he’s saved from plane crash, given an RPG interface, an inventory system, a battle pet, a rare class, and a few special items. Still, the world is now full of deadly monsters and the MC must survive with only 3 respawns. Not only that but he must figure out the mystery of who caused the RPG apocalypse and what’s expected of him by his benefactors.
Game mechanic wise, it’s fairly standard for an RPG Apocalypse story. Stats, levels, skills, special abilities, notifications, XP from killing monsters. The MCs class is interesting as a Gunsmith.
There are several issues with the story for me. The biggest issue here for me is that the story doesn’t make sense often. Parts seem kinda cool, but because of the translation/english editing issues the story didn’t flow well and events occurred that were frankly unclear and confusing. At one point, a random person shows up to arrest the MC for using a forbidden artifact, then monsters kill that guy, the MC is still arrested I think but is then he is pardoned by a judge who after self destructs. Huh?
Other issues include that the MC gets a bunch of levels, powers, and abilities that he doesn’t earn. I mean, by the 15% mark, he’s given 55 levels. Literally given them both by the normal system and by the special gifts he gets. It's unclear why he gets any of the levels to be honest. He didn’t accomplish anything or kill any monsters in the half day the story covers to that point.
Which brings me to another issue, combat is frankly lackluster and descriptively lacking. The fights amount to the MC shooting and maybe a sentence about what the results were. There’s no real struggle in any of the action scenes.
About 40% into the novel, the story does get better as far as translation issues are concerned. The actions of the MC become more focused on survival, exploration of his powers, and creating a human faction to oppose the alien Admins. However, much of the MCs success feels a bit foreordained with his massive and often unearned level gains. Its an ok development if you don’t mind a massively OP MC.
Overall, it was a challenging read sometimes but my brain eventually got used to ignoring the odd phrasing issues. I liked the parts of the story I understood. I mean, I generally like RPG Apocalypse stories, but there was just too much of the early story that was confusing. On the whole, it didn’t work for me.
Score: 6 out of 10