Review Detail of weebrevues in War Grounds

Hello, Web Novel site, I am Mack Samson. I run a new blog called Weeb Revues that covers Japanese light novels and such. This review of War Grounds was requested by the author, SilentMild, on Facebook. I am going to give my first impressions of the web novel; 35 chapters at this time. The premise of war grounds is a very strange twist to the usual MMO/isekai light novel. Our American(?) main character, Al Gentrix, has gotten his booty kicked on the VR battle royale game, War Grounds, due to it having a toxic playerbase that you'd expect from most MMOs. When he's just about to throw in the towel, he's told of an app called SARS that's supposed to help. Al installs it... and it basically turns Al into Kirito from SAO. SARS grants Al an OP hidden class right out of the gate, and is able to take control of Al's character through autopilot. However, the major drawback to this is that Al's mind could get damaged from long periods of rapid inputs. SARS is also able to hack War Grounds' database and find all kinds of information, but it can only scan one area of the game at a time. Al is a very greedy person. He literally plays War Grounds like a NEET as a coping mechanism for his father's death. This does lead to some spats with his mom, as you can expect. However, this aspect of Al's character doesn't get explored too much, at least not thus far. But hey, I don't mind because I just want to see MMO adventures. My fav, however, is SARS. He's a good boy, or rather, a good bot. If you love GlAdOs (is that how you spell it?) from Portal or AIDAN from The Illuminae Files, you'll love SARS. He's got some great deadpan sass that makes reading this web novel a pleasure. Other characters include Al's IRL friends Nisha and Sophie, who are also players in War Grounds (won't spoil who their avatars are, though). Al also befriends an orc named Papa Bear, but he seems to be kind of like that brash and annoying guy. The biggest appeal ends up being the story and world. War Grounds has a lot of thought put into as far as game modes and mechanics. It does get repetitive as the author lists every single game asset with its description every single time, however I don't mind because it accurately reflects how it would look in the game. Imagine if you were playing a complex JRPG and it only told you what stuff did after your first time seeing it! The ******* and momentum for action is also good. The only issue is that it's a bit skeletal. All the basic ideas are great, but there could be some more substance. I'm also a sucker for books written in the traditional format, as opposed to the one-line paragraph style that's also used in Reincarnated as a Sword. ~~~~~~ Verdict: 8/10 War Grounds is great so far. The story is more than sufficiently entertaining, it just needs some flesh. Writing is damn hard to do well, but writing the skeleton is quite possibly the hardest part. War Grounds is a great story from SilentMild!