LitRPG Podcast 240 - Noobtown Book 4, Ninetoes, Only I Level Up (Solo Leveling)
LitRPG Podcast 240 - Noobtown Book 4, Ninetoes, Only I Level Up (Solo Leveling)
Aug 21st, 2020
Hello everyone, welcome to episode 240 of the LitRPG podcast. I’m Ramon Mejia.
I’m here to bring you the latest LitRPG news, reviews, and author interviews. We have 6 new reviews just for you.
New Releases and Reviews:
Dungeons and Noobs: Noobtown Book 4 (07:01)
Slow start but picks up after 40%
Score: 7.5 out of 10.
Ninetoes (10:20)
23% RPG stuff starts
Score: 7.5 out of 10
Only I Level Up (Solo Leveling) (18:47)
Soooo Good
Score: 8 out of 10
https://www.webnovel.com/comic/only-i-level-up-(solo-leveling)_15227640605485101
Ian’s (Eye-Ann) Picks of the Week (24:09)
(Pic 0)
Segment from Ian Mitchell a long time LitRPG community member who reads and reviews as much as me. He was nice enough to agree to join the LitRPG Podcast family as a new reviewer.
(Pic 6)
Stars Asunder: Book 9 in The System Apocalypse
The paladin's choice
Score: 9.0 out of 10
Underworld - Vampire Gate: A LitRPG Series
Mr. Blue mage
Score: 8.5 out of 10
A grand romp of an adventure
Score: 8.7 out of 10
(Play Music 2)
LitRPG News
Dakota Krout and Luke Daniels do an AMA on Facebook to celebrate and promote the audiobook release of Ruthless.
https://www.facebook.com/TheDivineDungeon/videos/376740906640113/
Out Now!
The Idle System (A LitRPG series Book 6): The War
Hive Knight: A Dark Fantasy LitRPG (Trinity of the Hive Book 1)
Intellectum [RealRPG series] Book 1
The Power of Nine: Scifi LitRPG - Esports - Mecha Battles (Overdrive Book 2)
Raider (Olympus Reborn Book 2)
The Stone Tree: A LitRPG Adventure (Kingmaker Saga Book 1)
Tech Duinn: An Ether Collapse Series (Ether Flows Book 1)
Path to Villainy: An NPC Kobold's Tale
RE-ROLL: An Epic Litrpg Fantasy (New Realm Online Book 1)
Tower of Damnation (A LitRPG and GameLIT Saga): Book Two, Arcana
New LitRPG Audiobooks
Infernal Bones - Elemental Dungeon Book 2
Repel Boarders: A LitRPG, Dungeon Core Adventure
Ruthless: The Completionist Chronicles Book 5
Aether Gate Online: The Complete Saga
Upcoming LitRPG:
The SyStem: Multiverse: Book 2 (Aug. 23rd, 2020)
War of Gods: Dungeons of Perdition - Book 4 (A LitRPG and GameLit Adventure) (Aug. 24th, 2020)
Dream Stream Reality: A LitRPG Adventure (Aug. 25th, 2020)
Small Unit Tactics (Volume #1): LitRPG Series (Aug. 27th, 2020)
Holy War (Disgardium Book #5): LitRPG Series (Sept. 4th, 2020)
A Snake's Path (A Snake's Life Book 2) (Sept. 8th, 2020)
Dungeon Worlds: A Reborn Online LitRPG Adventure (Sept. 9th, 2020)
Stolen Lives: A LitRPG/GameLit Novel (The Underhill Chronicles Book 1) (Sept. 15th, 2020)
The Guild Core 1: Dragon Bourne (A Dungeon Core LitRPG/Cultavation Epic) (Sept. 16th, 2020)
Claimed (Olympus Reborn Book 3) (Sept. 18th, 2020)
Labyrinth to Tartarus: The LitRPG Saga Continues (The Eternal Journey Book 3) (Sept. 21st, 2020)
Sovereign (The Gods' Game, Volume IV): A LitRPG novel (Sept. 30th, 2020)
Seas the Day: A LitRPG/GameLit Adventure (The Bad Guys Book 5) (Oct. 1st, 2020)
Final Odyssey: A LitRPG Journey (Legends Online Book 7) (Oct. 1st, 2020)
Dungeon Crawler Carl (Oct. 2nd, 2020)
Watcher’s Fate: A LitRPG Saga (Life in Exile Book 3) (Oct. 6th, 2020)
City of Goblins (In the System Book #1): LitRPG Series (Oct. 7th, 2020)
The Otherworld (Underdog Book #4): LitRPG Series (Oct. 26th, 2020)
The Fallen God: A LitRPG Adventure (Eternal Online Book 3) (Oct. 27th, 2020)
Quest for the Ember Relic: A Phoenix Online LitRPG Adventure (Nov. 23rd, 2020)
Onto New Releases and Reviews
(Play Music 3)
New Releases and Reviews
(Picture 1)
Dungeons and Noobs: Noobtown Book 4
Badgelor has been patient, or at least as patient as a homicidal badger can be. With the celebration of Grebthar Day, it's finally time to go get Charles! Nothing is going to stop Jim and his companions, not even the signs of the Dark Overlord's return. This adventure could be Windfall's greatest yet, or it could be its absolute downfall.
My Opinion: 323 pages, $2.99, Available On Kindle Unlimited
The novel has a bit of a slower paced first half. There’s good humor, dialogue, character development, socializing with team members, and world building. I especially liked the holiday Grebthar Day. It’s not till the story hits about 40% that the pacing picks up and the action hits. But once it does it continues for the rest of the story and there’s finally some serious plot development with the initial premise of the story and some good twists by the end. Good stuff.
Score: 7.7 out of 10
Ian Mitchell’s Review
Happy Grebthar day!
I had mixed feelings about this one. The first 33% didn't do much for me. I mostly slogged through it. The cast basically futzed around in town. A lot of humor that didn't do much for me. I'm a bit humor impaired. It wasn't bad. I wasn't having fun.
Then comes Badger's Night. Now I'm laughing. The wideI variety of trap based abuse of Jim had me chuckling. The humor and banter started working for me. A lot of the last half of the book happens down in the dungeon. Some decent delving. Decent banter and joking around. That was clicking for me.Man demon and badger made for fun. The long epic battle at the end of the book was exciting. This wasn't a coherent experience overall. I'll continue the series. I liked the previous books.
Score: 7.5 out of 10.
Dungeons and Noobs: Noobtown Book 4
Ninetoes
What if an NPC dismissed with contempt by the players of your role-playing game was to become an adventurer? A LitRPG adventure.
Ninetoes is a wizard, which is unusual for a hobgoblin, and more unusual still, he’s no longer an NPC.
The world of Adrenon is a game world and a twist of fate has made Ninetoes an Adventurer. With this new status comes access to power, magic and skills that his kind can rarely attain, but more, it is a chance to grow and become the centre of his own story.
In his first quest, among the ancient ruins of Kavralach, Ninetoes faces danger and intrigue. Failure will mean the destruction of his home and his people, for whom he now has the potential to become their champion.
Ninetoes must master the magic system of the game, advance as rapidly as he can, and find friends. For a wizard alone is vulnerable.
If he can prevail, the hobgoblin Adventurer might someday become the hero he needs to be.
My Opinion: 219 pages, $3.99, Available On Kindle Unlimited
If you like the series NPCs, you may like this LitRPG story. It starts with a group of tabletop players getting ambushed by hobgoblins. One of the team refuses to heal the fallen members and the group breaks up. Another member, his healer dead, asks the DM if he can use the only hobgoblin that survived to roll a new character. The stat rolls aren’t great and the player chooses to roll something else, but the Character Sheet was filled out, even renaming the hobgoblin, our main character (MC), Ninetoes and was slipped back into the DMs paper.
In the hobgoblin’s fantasy world he wakes, weaker but smarter and it's revealed within the first 10% or so that Ninetoes has been transformed into an adventurer, that he has a literal character sheet he must protect and that trouble, fights, and adventures will follow him. But he'll also be able to do all the amazing things the adventurers do: Cast magic, amazing feats of strength, rapid healing. So, Ninetoes goes out into the world to search for answers and adventure.
On the game mechanics side of things, much of the early story is very fantasy since the normal people of this world don’t have access to the RPG stuff. Stats appear briefly at the beginning of the story when a player rolls for Ninetoes stat and you don’t see them again until the 23% mark when someone shows the MC how to read his character sheet and the reader sees it too with his stats, HP, level, skills, abilities, etc. From then on the game mechanics show up regularly as the MC trains, chooses a class, and figures out the limits of the system.
A few character issues kept the story from getting a better score. The MC, a hobgoblin, starts out the story in his own clan with a reasonable cultural background. Once he becomes an adventurer, the MC gains the ability to speak common, has increased intelligence, and interacts with a nearby human village. But it’s the MCs personality change and his knowledge of human behaviors that kinda stuck out as being untrue, with the MC interacting with humans like he’d always known how to do so and knew their customs. Also the towns folks treat the MC as an adventurer, with great respect and fairness, even though he’d done nothing to show that he was one. I just would have expected him, as a monster, to be treated as one. Especially since his clan had been hunting humans and raiding caravans at the start of the story.
Overall, once it gets to the RPG stuff it’s actually an interesting story that transforms a monster NPC into a player. There’s not much of a plot, just adventures he goes on or gets thrown into. But it also explores the skewed perception of the normal people of ‘Adventurers’ that visit their world.
Score: 7.5 out of 10
Only I Level Up (Solo Leveling)
In this world where Hunters with various magical powers battle monsters from invading the defenceless humanity, Sung Jin-Woo was the weakest of all the Hunters, barely able to make a living.
However, a mysterious System grants him the power of the ‘Player’, setting him on a course for an incredible and often times perilous Journey.
Follow Sung Jin-Woo as he embarks on an adventure to become an unparalleled existence through his “Level-Up” system - the only one in the entire world!
My Opinion: 116 chapters +, FREE or Unlockable Online
Note: There’s also a translated light novel version of the story, but this review is for the web comic.
The first 10 chapters are a little stretched out, but accomplish what they need to in establishing that dungeons and monsters exist in this world as do Hunters who kill said monsters and complete the dungeons for rewards. However, the main character (MC) is the weakest Hunter on record and on his latest dive into a dungeon, things go terribly wrong. His group is killed off or abandons him and he is left alone only to discover he’s secretly completed a hidden quest. The chapters clearly establish just how weak the MC is and how power means everything in this world.
The RPG stuff appears in chapter 11 when the MC gets an RPG interface that lets him level up, increase his stats, access a system store, notifications, and get amazing items, skills, and abilities. The MC is the only one with the RPG system though.
The artwork for the comic is great and really pushes the story into another level of enjoyment.
Overall, once the web comic gets to the RPG powers I was all in on this story. The web series is a great action adventure comic about a weak guy who is determined to increase his power despite the overwhelming odds he faces. Great stuff.
Score: 8 out of 10
Only I Level Up (Solo Leveling)
https://www.webnovel.com/comic/only-i-level-up-(solo-leveling)_15227640605485101
Ian’s (Eye-Ann) Picks of the Week - New Segment
Segment from Ian Mitchell a long time LitRPG community member who reads and reviews as much as me. He was nice enough to agree to join the LitRPG Podcast family as a new reviewer.
(Pic 6)
Stars Asunder: Book 9 in The System Apocalypse
The paladin's choice
John travels to Erethra to pay off his favor (picking an initial class from a galactic empire). Great reading and intrigue, combat was was exciting. John may be a paladin (mostly a free roaming troubleshooter) whose hobby is the system quest. Nice end for this arc.
Score: 9.0 out of 10
Stars Asunder: Book 9 in The System Apocalypse
(Pic 7)
Underworld - Vampire Gate: A LitRPG Series
Mr. Blue mage
I love these are all dungeon books. Interesting progressions. A Citadel down below. Power leveling at it's finest and seeing endgame level spells. Werewolf hunting. A fun ride without bogging down between towns.
Score: 8.5 out of 10
Underworld - Vampire Gate: A LitRPG Series
(Pic 8)
The Heroic Villain 3
A grand romp of an adventure
Through endless fields of puns, tropes, and author cameos. I loved the cinematic fight scenes. I enjoyed/endured the nigh endless puns where the author pushed until I thought I couldn't take anymore. Smart with a fair bit if social commentary and insight that fit the story well and didn't feel too preachy. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and the series which I can easily recommend.
Score: 8.7 out of 10
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(Music 4)
Music Credits
"Blip Stream" "Mighty Like Us" "Big Shift" "Vivacity"
Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/