This novel is offensively dumb gamer wish-fulfillment fantasy.
The MC is a start-over-from-the-beginning time traveler, with all the presumed advantages of knowing the future, so that's his advantage. That's fine as far as it goes. But the problem is that the author simply isn't smart enough to imagine what top people actually do and how competent they are and why, so his competition is basically dumb.
Author goes into incredible detail about how they're playing the game, which mostly consists of talking to NPCs and assigning them in some kind of ancient Chinese bureacracy, and we're supposed to believe that the entire rest of the world of real people are incompetents who are less competent than the MC in almost every sphere. For example, the MC starts a revolution by commenting to a friend of a friend that they should try buying something in the game with real money, which is somehow a novel idea even though it's a "real world" setting where people have literally been doing the same for a couple of hundred years or so by the setting of the game.
For some reason, despite being repeatedly declared the top player in the world, nobody in the entire world has considered spying on him, even though his general location in the game is known, and any newbie player can start in his region. It's like the entire world has completely forgotten that espionage exists.
The 2nd highest ranked player in China, which should be essentially the 2nd best person in China because major organizations are aware that the game is the most important thing in the world, is a prideful young master who repeatedly makes terrible errors, has terrible interpersonal skills, and really cannot be taken seriously. For that matter, all top players seem to be between the ages of 15-30, which is fairly ludicrous given that this is a mangement sim and in the real world competent top-level managers typically start 30+, and again, all top organizations in the world are completely aware this is the most important thing in the world to be doing.
The author has virtually no conception of realistic economics, which is incredibly irritating given the subject matter. For example, at this point the game has a closed economy with no trading in real markets - gold is generated by the game when he personally sells things, and items are generated by the game when he personally buys them with no fluctuation in pricing. Yet he randomly decides to increase wages in his city by 10x, and believes this will cause his economy to boom. In reality, with a completely closed economy, all this would do is cause inflation of exactly 1000%., thus drastically decreasing his available gold to spend on items from the system while not benefiting his economy at all. MC has no concept of reserves in terms of money or military reserves - he spends down to zero, and since nothing unexpected ever happens to him, it's no big deal.
Despite being a management sim intended to reward people who can essentially run large organizations, MC does not have a single other real person in his administration a couple of hundred chapters in. Given that the NPCs are fairly unrealistic, it is immediately clear this game is absolutely terrible for its intended purpose of teaching people to manage organizations - where I've read up to he rules over 30, 000 people and there has not been a single significant episode of in-fighting, corruption, or even resentment from his NPCs.
The game itself seems extremely sh*tty as a method of training people - people get immense advantages forever based on how well they did in the tutorial. Imagine the top genius in the world makes a poor decision in the first ten minutes they play the game which he has absolutely no idea is actually important because it's marketed as just a game - he is forever doomed to having absolutely no way to make up the permanent disadvantage he is given.
Also, his management is fundamentally based on ancient chinese bureacracy spruced up with some modern Chinese bureacracy, and it seems extremely dubious that ancient chinese bureacracy would be a solid basis for best future administration, given how it is no longer extant anywhere in the real world. Perhaps even more hilariously, he shuffles around his bureacracy what feels like every other day, and fortunately because it's a video game there's no apparent penalty for making people do entirely new jobs every week or so. Which again, would be fine if you're playing a game but this is supposed to represent a training simulator for the rulers of the future.
MC is incredibly lucky where everything goes his way, even though there is a luck stat in the game which he has a 5 out of a possible 20. Although we are aware he is a time traveler from the future and has a basic knowledge of the future, the story explicitly says he doesn't even have any personal experience playing the management game. Yet he has never made a single mistake and nothing I would consider unlucky has happened to him, and now that I think about it, it isn't even reasonable that he knows perfectly how to structure his city considering he never even played the management game in the past. It's like expecting somebody who is really good at Counter-Strike to know perfect gameplay in Civ VII even though they've never played it just because they come from the future where CIV VII has been out for a year.
There's really no reason to believe the MC is actually skilled at anything other than the fact that somehow he keeps being ranked #1 in the world. He had a mediocre education, appears to have never worked a real job nor had any real responsibility in his past life, and performed mediocrely in the game in his past life (which he played in MMORPG mode rather than sim management mode). Even assuming he can competently leverage his advantages of future knowledge, there is really no reason at all to believe he has any skills at all, and everything we see in his life that doesn't involving future knowledge cheating appears to indicate otherwise.
For example: MC unreasonably spends enormous amounts of money and effort on every girl he sees for not much return, yet somehow this never bites him in the ass. He doesn't even get laid for his trouble, for chrissakes. He's like a 13-year-old who gives big gifts to girls online because they are girls, for no real benefit in the game. Of course all the girls like him anyway because the whole thing stinks of harems, even when he is hiding his secret identity as the top player in the world. It's all clearly an enormous waste of resources for dubious benefit in a lot of cases, and honestly, I would literally prefer if he managed to seduce every last one of them for his harem because at least that'd show some actual competence in doing something instead of acting like a 13-year-old virgin. Imagine if Bill Gates, when Microsoft was worth $10 million dollars, decided to gift a hottie female tech CEO Windows to get on her good side, because why the hell not. And imagine if somehow, this ended up all working out in his favor or something. Nevermind the fact that so many top managers and gamers in general in the world happen to be extremely beautiful young women, which contravenes real life to an absurd degree. Pretty much all his major allies are hotties who are described down to their pink nipples poking out of their braless top. There's literally only two dudes he's allied with, who have been so poorly described it's easy to forget they exist, except for the fact that I'm damn near certain one of them will betray him in the future for no other reason than the fact that he hasn't bothered to investigate their background at all because hell, it's not like he pays attention to his male allies. God only knows how irritated I would be at that "big reveal"
We've seen plenty of wish-fulfillment MMOs about how people who are good at playing a video game can become the most important person in the game, which may be a real world. As masturbatory as that is, this novel wants you to believe that one of those sh*tty phone games that involve building a city and a territory and I guess probably attacking other cities would result in you being the best administrator in real life for the world. It's made further offensive by the fact that it's inherent to the story that the MC is only the top in the world because of his future-knowledge cheating, so assuming everything goes perfectly for him and he's given mass power and privileges, he has essentially f**ked over all of humanity, which is facing an existential crisis and must have top leaders for an uncertain future. There is zero awareness by the MC that he is actually risking the entire human race by winning the game by cheating.
So. The novel tries to take itself seriously with a super-important real game, but the game is sh*t. Everybody but the MC is incompetent. The MC is forever distracted by any girl. The writing is below average. Fundamentally, the entire premise is sh*t. The novel, as a whole, is attempting to represent the MC being a perfect king by having future knowledge, but that has absolutely nothing to do with actually being a good king and the whole thing is fundamentally limited by the author's poor imagination of good management, and how the real world as a whole functions, and what skilled and intelligent people are actually like.
Unless you can literally make yourself believe sh*tty empire-building phone games are excellent simulators of real-life nation management and thus can mistake "highly-detailed" for "very realistic", I do not recommend reading this. Any and all real life experience in virtually any endeavor will derail your enjoyment of this novel.
edit: After finishing this review initially, I read another 15 chapters through to his city defense arc and it is so vomit-worthy I'm lowering this to 1-star from 2-stars. Things that happen:
Top players continue to fail quests for no reason like 1) gosh, what is a military reserve, or 2) I thought I would win, but it turned out that even with everything going according to plan I didn't have enough guys.
He's unsure he can win it, especially since he just took major casualties. Decides to fight the battle anyway because he wants to be first in the world despite no important benefits and he's really weaker militarily than he has been in some time.
MC asks random low-grade officer who isn't even a famous historical figure or whatever to snipe the enemy general with a ballista bolt 1.3 km away. He does it, first shot, wins the battle.
Personally leads a charge to enemy outnumbering him 4:1 when he's behind his walls on the theory that "oh their morale is weak, best to end the battle quickly". Never mind the fact that he's leading a charge into the enemy lines and the whole reasoning their morale is weak is because their leader just died. Never mind the fact that he's supposed to have a low Luck stat so bad things should happen to him just because. Doesn't matter, enemy collapses and retreats immediately, it's not like he's potentially throwing away a won battle or anything like that....
Refused to conscript more troops into a battle where he's badly outnumbered because he already has twice a big an army as he planned to. After battle, recruits bandits into his army because he shrugs and says he'll be growing in the future. Says that bandits are just decent guys forced into dire straits. Neglects that in the last arc he didn't want bandits to join his army because of their generally poor moral character.
I don't know what the hell I was thinking continuing to read this a little further, every chapter made me hate it more.
