I’m just flying through these finalists!*
Today I’m diving into my review for No More Levels – which surprised me a lot! LitRPG and I have a complicated relationship, and so I don’t always go into them with the highest of expectations (not that they aren’t written well or have their audience or anything, but I bounce off a lot more than I love, unfortunately).
*Esme still finished all of them before I finished four.
Life sucks when you’re a potato farmer.
That’s why Rin can’t wait to turn sixteen and conquer the nearest beginner dungeon. Only then can he acquire a powerful class in the Game of the Gods and begin the earnest grind to leveling up. With enough monster kills, he might even become someone truly strong, just like his father.
In a world where levels mean everything, it’s a perfect plan.
Until it all falls apart.
No More Levels is the story of Rin, who is a potato farmer in the world of The Gods’ Game. He can’t wait to turn 16 so he can go into his beginner dungeon and pick a class. Unfortunately for Rin, this doesn’t go at all like he has planned, and Rin ends up Cursed. Being Cursed means that you can’t gain any EXP at all – and so Rin is fated to forever be a level 6 potato farmer.
But, as it turns out, Rin finds out that being Cursed isn’t exactly what people think it is, and so he goes his own way, finding all of the dungeons that he can so that he can level up the most unusual way that he or anyone has ever seen. Craven, the god of the Cursed, has all kinds of secrets, and Rin is going to find them all.
This one surprised me. LitRPG and I have a weird relationship – I bounce off them a lot, and it’s really nothing against LitRPG as a genre, I just have a hard time jiving with a lot of them because in a genre that erupted like this one did, there’s just so many that are just the same thing over and over. So when I started reading this one and realized it was the ‘we’re regular people with regular lives except we see stats in our heads, because reasons’ kind of LitRPG, I will admit that I rolled my eyes.
But then I read further and all of a sudden I was like 65% into it? How did that happen?!
Rin was an easy character to cheer for. He gets the shaft here, and he doesn’t know why. He just knows that his father was not who he thought, and that his father’s wife absolutely hates him. So he starts out being quite literally punished for nothing. He becomes Cursed, and as such he is shunned by most everyone he meets. But Rin rises above all that and discovers that the Cursed class works differently than everyone thinks. Sure, it can’t gain levels or EXP the traditional way, but it certainly isn’t weak. So, this level 6 potato farmer is going to show the world that being Cursed isn’t the worst thing that could happen!
All told, I had a solid 8/10 stars of fun with No More Levels – if you’re into LitRPG, you’re going to like it, and if you’re not sure where to start with them, this would be a good one to start to wade into the ocean with.
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