Any gaming novels you could recommend?
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Staying indoors, I don't have anything other to do than doing chores, reading and gaming. And recently I've got a liking to gaming novels like Sword Art Online, The New Gate and A Wild Last Boss Appeared!. But I really want to read more such novels. Could you maybe recommend me some?
Update: Thank you all for your recommendations!!! Now I have enough titles to ease my boredom.😆
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@DeGlass Well, the Log Horizon anime was good, so maybe you could give that a shot.
Infinite Dendrogram seems to take place inside a VRMMO, like SAO.
Both Death March Rhapsody and Welcome to Japan, Ms. Elf have game-like systems, but aren't truly gaming.
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Infinite Dendrogram is a really fun one, I totally recommend.
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"Do You Like Your Mom and Her Two-Hit Multi-target Attacks" is a dumb, but fun virtual video game world based one. They even joke about glitches and the developers' creation of flavor text on items being unique (or work in progress, ha ha).
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Log Horizon had a great anime. The LN's are... mixed. They've got some nice added content and extra information, but the technical quality of the writing (prose, sentence construction, etc.) is less than stellar. At least two or three steps below anything I've seen on a J-Novel title.
Dendrogram is an excellent VRMMO series.
Paying to Win in a VRMMO is another mixed series. I read it when it was on catchup, and I don't regret it, but I'm not sure I'd want to spend money on it; the main character is very annoyingly smug and arrogant.
Mixed Bathing is like the series piisfun mentioned, very game-like mechanics, but it's a true fantasy world and not an MMO.
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There are also also Strongest Gamer: Let's Play in Another World and Redefining the META at VRMMO Academy, which have rather nice gaming aspects, but, well... former was cancelled in Japan, so it doesn't have a proper conclusion (though volumes themselves are standalonish enough for this to not really matter), and there is no news about when vol.2 of the latter will be published in english (see Sol Press thread for more info).
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How about 1/2 Prince, if you don't mind chinese light novels? It's a really interesting and funny series, one of the -if not the very best- gaming novels I've ever read. I even bought the original books (the newest version) and the manhua, because I really, really liked it.
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The King's Avatar is a really popular one on Webnovel/Qidian, the first 90 chapters are free, otherwise you either have to buy coins or farm passes every day (you can get 3 passes per day from like logging in and other trivial activities, plus an extra ~3 a week if you read a lot). I've only read like 5-6 chapters so can't comment on it, but thought I'd mention it.
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Like other have said Infinite Dendrogram is all about a game and a pretty good series which know how to exploit it's game aspect. The gary stuish MC can be really obnoxious at time, but if it didn't put you off in SAO it shouldn't be a problem in Dendro.
If you want some gaming LN but also something different you should try Outer Ragna, it's a pretty short series (only 2 books currently, likely 3 when it end). It's quite the strange story where a streamer is controlling characters in game but we get the story from both his PoV and the characters PoV, plus it look like it's more than a game and the Streamer isn't really controlling the characters most of the time. It's hard to explain without spoiling but so far it's been a great novel, with good characters and world building although it can be a bit confusing at times.
And if you're in for something really really weird there's the second story of "Last and first idol", just imagine characters being isekai in a mix of a gacha game and Spore... also mobile games are the answer to every big philosophy questions.
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@Clarabelle said in Any gaming novels you could recommend?:
How about 1/2 Prince, if you don't mind chinese light novels? It's a really interesting and funny series, one of the -if not the very best- gaming novels I've ever read. I even bought the original books (the newest version) and the manhua, because I really, really liked it.
1/2 Prince was written by Yu Wo, who is also the author of Legend of Sun Knight, am I right? Where did you buy the novels and the manhua? I've tried buying the books of Legend of Sun Knight, but couldn't find any online shops selling them. Taiwanese books seem somehow hard to get...
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@DeGlass said in Any gaming novels you could recommend?:
@Clarabelle said in Any gaming novels you could recommend?:
How about 1/2 Prince, if you don't mind chinese light novels? It's a really interesting and funny series, one of the -if not the very best- gaming novels I've ever read. I even bought the original books (the newest version) and the manhua, because I really, really liked it.
1/2 Prince was written by Yu Wo, who is also the author of Legend of Sun Knight, am I right? Where did you buy the novels and the manhua? I've tried buying the books of Legend of Sun Knight, but couldn't find any online shops selling them. Taiwanese books seem somehow hard to get...
Buying taiwanese books isn't thard hard, but it isn't easy either. I bought the 1/2 Prince novels and the manhua on KingStone. They are shipping overseas and you can pay with PayPal. Usually you get your ordered items in a few days, but it is quite expensive and you also get a letter after a week or two, where they ask you to pay the custom fees. The advantage is, that you don't need to go to the customs yourself, the downside is, like I've already said, it is quite expensive, so I recommend only buying on this website once, or twice a year. And it is really difficult to navigate on this website, if you can't read chinese. But I think there exists guides for helping you registering there, if not, simply use an online translator.
What I also noticed was, that native light novel series are much longer available than their respective manhua adaptions. I bought the 1/2 Prince novels in 2018, 6 years after the last volume of the latest version got released (here I should remark, that I don't know if the older versions of the novel are still available). At this time three volumes of the manhua were no longer available (out of print?) and I bought them used (I was lucky and got one volume brand new) via a shopping agent I can really recommend.
Regarding the Legend of Sun Knight novels (which I also own), you can buy them on the same website, either in a set, or seperately (same with the 1/2 Prince novels). If you are interested in the manhua too, I think it is still available.
I hope I could help you with my explanation.^^ -
I'm not sure what defines a "Gaming Novel" but:
Both Lazy Dungeon Master and How NOT to Summon Demon Lord - Dungeons and Dragons/ some MMORPG references (Isekei into a gaming world, also ecchi and humorous) -
@Wellwisher said in Any gaming novels you could recommend?:
There are also also Strongest Gamer: Let's Play in Another World and Redefining the META at VRMMO Academy, which have rather nice gaming aspects, but, well... former was cancelled in Japan, so it doesn't have a proper conclusion (though volumes themselves are standalonish enough for this to not really matter), and there is no news about when vol.2 of the latter will be published in english (see Sol Press thread for more info).
I enjoyed Strongest Gamer. I'd love to read more, but I thought it reached a good pause point.
World's Strongest Rearguard has game-like mechanics and is very mildly ecchi. Much less than Mixed Bathing but with a somewhat similar feel.
Magic User: Reborn in Another World as a Max Level Wizard (Light Novel) is interesting because the MC arrives in a world that has one kind of magic, but the magic he is given is based on his AD&D 1.0 style table-top gaming. Jack Vance style "memorize X spells per day" and with long cast times.
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I've read the first two volumes of Bottom Tier Character Tomozaki and think it's wonderful, even if it's not exactly what you may be expecting by a gaming novel. Probably my favorite new series I've started in quite a while.
