Ugg. So many things I had a problem with while reading this web novel. I can turn a blind eye to one or two annoying things but this novel just keeps throwing BS at you one after another. First off, MC feels he wasted his life. He spent his entire life playing one video game. He even spent 7 years of his life doing nothing but crafting a single item in the game. OK MC I agree with you, you're a f*cking loser. So when he wishes to return to... more>> the past and his wish was granted I was happy for the loser MC. Your once in a lifetime second chance has come, do something meaningful with your life this time. So what does our loser MC do with his second chance? He devotes even more of his life to play that same s*upid video game. Great, MC uses his second chance at life to go from loser to super loser.

Second thing that was BS was the MC was abducted by a child labor ring along with several other children and forced to play video games to make money for his abductors. MC is very angry about this and vows revenge in his second life. So what is his revenge? He decides to beat them at a video game. Yep, he left all those other children ens*aved to the kidnappers and walked away with a smug face because he beat them in the game. Wow, that is some like super hardcore revenge there MC. Nidome no Yuusha has nothing on you. And you even left the other children ens*aved. Was it really that hard to pickup the phone and drop a tip to the police about the ens*aved children? Can you give back your second chance at life and go back to being a s*ave you piece of shit?

Third thing that was BS was the author made a big deal about how spending too much time jacked into VR was detrimental to your health. In fact it even crippled the MC in his first life. So what does our MC do to avoid that fate this time around? Why spend even more time jacked into VR of course! Except this time he makes sure to get a 'proper rest' of 2 hours of sleep a day. And make up for the lack of sleeping more by doing pushups and taking vitamins. Really? Author thinks doing pushups and taking vitamins lets you get by on 2 hours of sleep a day for months on end? I'd like you to try that out author and see how well that goes.

Fourth piece of BS was the unbalanced game. Developers put in things in the game that were incredibly unbalanced and game breaking. MC abuses these things to become an OP god no one can touch. If this happened in a real game, these things would be patched and rebalanced. Or the game users would abandon the game. Yet apparently the developers of this BS game not only got away with this BS but it was praised as the best game in the world. Huh?

Fifth piece of BS was the developers of the game had this strict 'privacy policy' about the game. Now in real life privacy policies place restrictions on the distribution of real life information. However ingame information is freely available. That is reversed in this s*upid novel. Everyone has access to your real life information. However your ingame information is restricted. WTF? People could abuse the f*ck out of that. In the novel the MC only gets phone calls from people who want to start a streaming channel for him. But the gangsters who the MC ripped off millions of dollars from? They just sat on their thumbs and cried about their loss. Meanwhile when users suspect the MC is abusing the system, they alert the developers. And the developers say: "That darn privacy policy is preventing us from checking on this account. Maybe we made it too strict? Oh well, if we try to change anything at this point the entire game would stop working." WTF? Privacy policies are changed all the time. Yet your game would stop working if you did? Was the author on crack while writing this crap?

Finally the novel itself was a snooze fest. A webnovel about a guy who plays video games? Oh boy, he is going to solo the boss monster! Oh no, he died. Now he has to respawn and try again. Yawn. There is no tension, and no plot besides the MC leveling up his character and making money. Infact the MC rarely even speaks to anyone. <<less

To be a honest, I was a bit disappointed at the beginning of the novel, the MC was just a robot who had a sense of duty to become the best in the game with his pastlife knowledge, but as the novel goes on the MC changes and not just a bit.

... more>>

Spoiler

He starts to slowly trust others again, enjoys his life and not just the game, makes rational choices of making money with stocks through his knowledge of the future. As the time goes on the Value of the game becomes less and less for him as he realizes that the game is in the end just a game.

[collapse]

I have to give this novel 5 stars simply because I enjoyed the mix of VR and the character growth of our MC, the only minus point is that the fights are most of the time boring, because there is no suspension in them.

I can highly recommend this novel to all VR novel lovers and people who like to read characters grow up and change :3 <<less

Grammar: 3/5 (Formerly 2.5 as of Chapter 3, proofreader really flexing here)
Story: 2/5 (Formerly a 2.5 as of Chapter 3... borrows from way too many other works without adding much)
Writing: 1/5

(Update as of Chapter 6: Seeing some real improvement from the translation team. The addition of a Proofreader really shines through as the syntax and grammar are slowly improving. The story is actually taking a drop in score because it seems to be cherry picking story elements from other works (namely Legendary Moonlight Sculptor and... more>> SwordArt:Online) without adding a spin on the events. Again, I attribute this to the author's style of Telling you what is happening instead of fleshing the story out. Any details given always feel like something said after the fact to cover up inconsistencies.)

A real lack of quality... The grammar is fairly poor. Throughout the work you will stumble on the awkward wording/phrasing, misspelling, and confusing syntax multiple times. The story itself is fairly bland and the genre overdone. The writing, which is something I've come to praise in most Korean series, is horribly executed. The author uses almost no descriptions, just telling you that something is this way and you'll have to believe him about it. It feels like a summary of a story rather than a story in and of itself. The "Ability" of the MC is rather bland almost feeling like a rip-off of SA:O. I have no hope for this series, since the translation group can't really improve the Author's writing style, unless they alter the story almost completely.

(Shout out to OshiroHonzo: Thanks for the mention! But I just rate and say things as based on my first impression read through. I really only rate these three things when I read a story for personal preferences. Grammar because I personally get headaches (I really do get headaches) when I read something that is just blatantly awkward. The story is rated because I like knowing if the author is bringing anything original to the table with a series. Finally, the part I feel is the most important of all, the Author's writing (or the translation groups rendition of it). Writing is one of the most important elements to a story, it can be the difference between telling someone about some amazing thing and showing it to them. A good writer will give you a story that sounds reasonable, and has some credibility. A Great Writer gives you an entirely new world that sucks you in and you can't help but feel that you know this world almost as well as the one you live in.

I always feel that a Great Writer turns it's readers into scientists. The reader ends up coming up with theories that seem to follow the story world logic. If so-and-so had done this instead of that, Then this would have happened because of that. A Great Writer gives enough details, colors, emotion, and evidence with clear consistency to make you be able to jump to these thought exercises.

All that aside, your review was still good. It's your view on the novel and just as valid as my own.) <<less

No suspense. No competition. Not even a illusion of competition. MC uses his future knowledge to fully take advantage of the game and leave everyone behind very early on. It's an unbrigable gap that only widens each chapter. Only interesting thing is that the game company and AI aren't blind to the MC taking advantage of the game.

I created an account because of this story.

One man Army is a really good story, every chapter you discover new and intersting things. It is not a simple story at all, you simply can't juge it easily. Maybe in the beginning it wasnt so good, but it keeps getting better and most importantly, it really feels real, it doesnt seem like a story but reality. I think it is better than other stories with game elements because it never gets boring and is really interesting.

I dont want the translator... more>> to stop translating this, neither do I want people to don't read this because of bad reviews. I want more people to enjoy this and to read more chapters.

Please, don't believe in bad reviews and just read it, this story is not simple at all.

Five stars for me.

I forgot to write something important: the story is fast, which is great, there's no filler chapters.

If the main character says that he's going to do something, he does it, there's no fooling around. Everything in this story makes sense. There's no random, godlike stuff, which is one of the reasons that I said that this story seems real. <<less

-1 star for being too repetitive. Same thing is state 3-4 times in the same chapter, so it's almost unbearable to read without skipping ~1/5 of sentences.

-1 star for poor reasoning (on author side, not MC side). Ex: Double xp requirement for being op, and that's with typical exponential growth of xp per lvl? Only casual player won't take that deal. Waiting in orphanage to be tested by s*avers just to fake that test and run from orphanage after that? He should run from orphanage before that test.

-1 star for... more>> being too abstract. Author states "MC is very good at pvp, so he easily wins" instead of describing scenes that shows how MC is good at pvp. Basically, it's at the level of a draft. <<less

Many things:

1. Super antisocial. Has no friends or anyone he talks to
2. Unrealistic, as in he only sleeps 2 hours a day, even after he says he has to avoid burnout like last time
3. No real life at all. Honestly such a scrub
4. Author talks him up too much "He is so awesome, and actually famous, not that he knew this..." Like how about he goes about his solitary life, and THEN finds out he is famous? But no, we need the omniscient author to tell us everything...
5. Honestly seems like everybody else is incompetent

i like it so far and honestly, I don't get why people are surprised that he doesn't group up when it says loner protagonist right there in the tags. Maybe they didn't read the tags first?

MC is absurdly OP but it was expected on my part because how else could he play alone? In the beginning there is only the game and his focus on getting first in everything but he slowly starts opening up to other people so there is character growth, though it's slow.

the story only gets a... more>> 3.5 because frankly it's impossible to function long term on only two hours of sleep like that. Four hours of uninterrupted sleep is the minimum humans need to function normally (from a researched medical standpoint), and most people are still pretty cranky and dazed with only four hours. For someone so concerned with his health and burning out his gift, he's not taking very good care of himself.

Also, for a "revenge" novel there is a decided lack of revenge. He didn't even bother to get revenge on the first group of people who hurt him (at the very beginning of the story), even though just calling the cops on them would have been enough to break up their little s*ave ring. Instead he decides not to get involved. He hasn't done anything to get revenge or hunt down any of the people who messed with him and betrayed him in the past so if your looking for someone wanting payback than this isn't for you. It's more second chance and "i'll show you by becoming the best" rather than the MC actually getting revenge on anyone. <<less

I'll be honest here. It's extremely generic, full of cliches, too predictable, too easy.

If you still want to read this novel, please by all means try.

This novel is not bad, that being said it's not good either.

... more>> I skipped some parts of the story because it's boring and repetitive and still get the gist of the whole story. This novel is just that predictable.

But some aspects within this novel are quite enjoyable too, at least for me, and that's why I keep on reading this, while skipping some parts here and there.

Reincarnation to the past just can't be mixed with VR. I don't know why, or maybe it's just that I have yet to find the good one.

Last, thanks to Chamber, I enjoyed EER, but I really don't know why you picked this novel up, but hey, I'm just a reader, so I'm eternally grateful to you.

Cheers! <<less

The author style is too narrative, there's barely any dialogue or interactions with other people. It's just mass info dumps after info dumps.

There are a lot of redundant explanations as well, it's such a tedious and boring read.

The battles lacks suspense and you could just skip it without missing anything.

... more>> Overabundance of titles. It just doesn't make sense to put a Unique and above title as a reward for every kill for a named monster.

The MC is too OP, he haven't even used his Gigantification yet and he could just kill anyone even the top rankers on his previous life like it's nothing.

The MC is all over the place, the author didn't really give him a clear goal. He just went to be the best dungeon raider, merchant, pvp, arena etc. The vengeance thing was barely mentioned.

I've read a lot of VR related novels and this is one of the worst. It doesn't bring anything new to the genre and the writing is severely lacking. <<less

This has been a fun novel.

It is easy to read and the system the author presents seems a natural fit to the story.

The plot is fairly straightforward, but the in-novel scenes are nicely varied with many settings and many situations. There are also a nice variety of characters.

It is refreshingly bare of severe angst or pain or betrayal issues. Such things are there very lightly and do not weigh down the writing or make reading a chore or some sort of vicarious torture of the reader.

Well, So far so good as I see. Still it is too early to say if it will be good or not since they don't mention his goal. Still, people who like to read about a old pro gamer being sent back in time to get rid of his regrets it be good for you. While being a bit overpowered compared to others (I think not sure for now).

Gotta say... OfficePony is a way better critic than myself so listen to him. Also OfficePony, for some people the grammar and... more>> misspelling does not even make some people flinch (like me). Still, is good to advice people that are not fluent in English so thanks for noticing that. <<less

One-dimensional story which took (stole?) most MMO concepts from EoSP. That's unfortunate, because it was bad. There's plenty of unique titles, one-time bonuses, legendary quests, hidden dungeons and the like, which shows how little these authors knows of actual MMO design.

Conversations and character interaction are avoided as much as possible. A pity! For example, what was the relationship between the protagonist and his SKY Telecom protégé like? This is what I usually like the most in MMO novels. Not the absolutely absurd power creep, but the impact on real life.... more>> The power, and the changes in relations that come with. Well, if there's no characters then you won't have very cliché Korean webnovel characters, right?

Another sad matter is the Chaos system, as it's called here (forgot what it was in EoSP). Just like in EoSP, it advances the timeline compared to the past due to the protagonist's cheat-like existence. Seriously, that's all it does to combat someone with way higher potential power? Screwing over everyone playing it normally for one person who seems to find exploit after exploit conveniently left in?

The protagonist's power level is a bore. Make it too easy? Removes all tension! Removes all accomplishment! Yes of course, he works hard. It's just that you don't notice over the sound of the gold he's raking in, all unique titles he's getting, all secret dungeons he's doing and all NPC organizations he's taking over.

The writing itself isn't that great either. I'm not talking about the translation or editing here, only about the actual content of the sentences. As happens so often, the author sometimes assumes the reader is s*upid and can't infer anything. When other people talk, it's about him. The little bit of conversation in this novel isn't well done. All the MMO power creep messages clutter the novel unnecessarily. I get it, it's an OP something. Seen it so many times already this novel. Skip.

This novel's only strong point is cheesiness, which is why I still enjoy it a bit. But it evokes no strong emotion, isn't well written, isn't smart, isn't... good in any way. I've read novels with painfully irrational characters that I rated higher because at least they got emotion out of me. <<less

Oh gawd mighty, this novel is quite the mediocre tr*shshow.

The MC is an as*hole through and through, destroying the game for everyone, just to be ontop of the game himself.
He literally scams and robs people, just because he has prior knowledge.

That prior knowledge of his manifests in the following pattern:

... more>>

1. [Topic] will only be known to the public X Years from now on
2. But hrrhrr, MC knows it now!
3. MC then goes to hog all the unique and rare items and titles for himself
4. Literally destroys the game's balance and robs all other players of their fun
5. ...
6. Is smug about it

This patterns repeats itself every couple chapters, so you get the full brunt of MC's faggotry thrown at you.

The writing style is aweful as well, author always repeats himself with facts that he already divulged some paragraphs before.

This novel is a pure self-insert fantasy of the author, without introducing new aspects of this genre, nor breaking any conventions. Just pure, s*upid self-insert fantasy.
Stay away if you are used to quality content! <<less

One of the best "reincarnated/reborn/time travel MMO player uses future knowledge to his advantage".

I've come across quite a few of these stories, and the authors tend to focus too much on the MC and the benefits he gains from his foreknowledge. One Man Army doesn't have that problem. The story focuses plenty on other important parties and the impact the MC has on them.

This story avoids an annoying quirk quite a few of these types of stories have (actually, not just reincarnated ones, but most MMO and money-making stories), where... more>> the MC refuses to spend the money they have earned. (Exceptions: LMS and Emperor of Solo Play, with RL investments and investing into his game character, respectively.)

As for facing challenges despite the MC's advantages, the author has done a really job of something I rarely see in any story, MMO or otherwise: the MC sets new goals with meaningful pay offs for himself, that require strategy, not just 10, 000 more sword swings as many "meaningful challenges" tend to be in other stories.

Just like Emperor of Solo Play, the MC is trying to succeed as a solo player in a guild dominated environment, but this story is much more satisfying in the breadth of reach and depth of impact the MC has. <<less

Simple story, cautious type MC, and although author tries to avoid it there's inevitable jerking off of the MC... it gets frankly ridiculous in terms of balance - which is all gone to sh*t at this point. Well, it's a fun read, and personally very enjoyable.

Overall it's an average novel, nothing to rave about.

The story starts off interesting with his background story and whatnot but so far in to the story it doesn't really play much of a role, besides that he gets his slight revenge whenever he meets that certain party, but majority of the story is just him solo speed grinding, get op titles, and stream/post videos. Just a rinse and repeat novel. He literally makes no friends at all, so not much else besides npc chatting and a few dialogues here and... more>> there from people he does come across (You know he has no friends and barely interacts with anything when his lover is an npc lmao). He skips through game content like it's nothing so its pretty boring and lackluster. Not really sure what his motivation is anymore? He's super rich and at this point just wants to be popular?? Not sure if this is his version of fun? Also I feel like the settings skip way too quickly, jumping from one thing to another, and very little detail are given besides the op items and titles he receives (maybe that's why the novel finishes at 226 chapters?). The ancient knowledge thing is kinda s*upid too, gives them multiple jobs but having them makes it harder to level. It's one of those features that only the MC can fully utilize but no one in the game actually does because it makes it too hard for them. Like, what's the point of it when only the MC can utilize it, pretty much a feature the author created for MC intended purposes (another example would be his Card job thing, where no one could utilize the job because the creation of them is almost impossibly difficult)

Anyways, ending my rant. Read if you want, it's an ok VR novel. <<less

One word: boring!

It had what it takes for MMORPG/VR novel but it somehow lacking.

The tedious grinding, making money endlessly. Although I keep reading it, I just feel like progressing through the story seems like a drag. No anticipation, full of cliches and plot holes everywhere.

The MC is bland and has no character at all, other than being money obsessed. Even though this is supposed to be a revenge/reincarnation, we have yet to see the revenge part. Other characters are basically nonexistent, except for few NPC's which are there periodically.... more>> No interactions at all.

Other than that, there's nothing worth reading. You can find better novels of similar genres out there. Though, for it's potential, I will still put this in my reading list so that I can read later and see wether it worths it. <<less

This book is rather poor in quality. Pacing is terrible. The game that is supposed to literraly monopolize the entire video game industry is very, very unbalanced. The MC has future knowledge and utilizes it to get game-breaking titles and to play the item market to amass funds. He is supposed to gain experience at 1/8th the rate of normal players (by effectively having 4 classes at the same time and the related XP penalty) but quickly overtakes the entire player base and continues to get game-breaking titles. Also apparently... more>> the MC is a superhuman able to continuously sleep for only 2 hours a day (in one chunk, not spaced out with naps like say through an Uberman schedule). He also wants to get back at a child labor ring... by not doing anything but continuing to play the game? I would have called the police on them the first change I get.

There is a similar novel, Reincarnation of the Strongest Sword God, it is also not the best in quality but is much better than this story if you're looking for a "Taking over the VR video game by going back in time" type of book to spend your time with. The only redeeming qualities that One Man Army has that would keep me reading, for now, is that the developers of the game are keeping track of the going-ons of the game, although 36 chapters in and they haven't noticed the one player getting all the unique titles and being first in conquering all the dungeons. I'm really interested in what happens when the developers finally notice the MC. <<less

Real Rating 2

It's boring fella's, I dont know what more can be said. The character development is as thin as cicadas wings and for someone with foreknowledge he makes a lot of idiotic and self harming mistakes. Gave up shortly after chap 100.