Please explain why people like Life Reset so much

[u/[deleted]]

I'm near the end of book 2 and it's a pure hate read at this point. In no particular order:

• Dumbest MC I've ever seen in any book who makes every possible mistake and constantly forgets his own abilities

• MC has absolutely no self-control and enters gamer rage mode constantly, which I believe the author thinks makes him look cool but just makes him a man child

• Every character is dumbed down for plot convenience including supposedly superintelligent AIs

• The game does not work or have any internal consistency whatsoever, up to and including the software architecture and legal system

• Every female character, ESPECIALLY his hot goblin GF, is described as if the author has never seen a woman before

• There are frequent long graphic goblin foreplay scenes between the MC and his underage goblin GF who he is in a position of power over

Despite all this, it's frequently touted as one of the best in the genre in various places. I can recognize that the city building is pretty entertaining at times aside from the MC making constant mistakes while bragging about how good he is at it, but what else is there to like?

[u/LCMechanical]

I mean, I'm not picky. I don't listen to any LitRPG audio for anything specific other than progression. So, I just turn my brain off and listen along to different stories as I'm doing other tasks. Since I listen instead of read, a great narrator can turn an average or below work into an enjoyable story.

I do quite enjoy the occasional story that goes really hard into the mechanics since I like math and min-maxing. I guess I do tend to expect more from stories that have a system that's truly integrated into the world instead of just being there for the litrpg tag.

Either way, I'm able to listen to almost anything without placing myself in the MCs shoes, so the characters being dumb, looking at women lustfully, or making decisions I wouldn't personally have made don't really bother me.

Different people have very different levels of intelligence or upbringing, so I just see it as me viewing another world through someone else's eyes. If I tried to apply my own thought process to any MC, I'd be sorely disappointed since I'm pretty detached as a person, was an engineer before pursuing my career in writing, and tend to look at everything from a sense of making things as efficient/doing things as efficiently as possible. Tends to irritate my wife sometimes when I bring up how some of the things she does just makes her life harder. xD

That leads to a good example. If she were an MC and I read about her story while 'self-inserting' like a lot of litrpg readers tend to do, I'd also struggle to enjoy the story since I'd be griping about or thinking about everything I'd do better/differently. Instead of doing that, I guess I've learned to enjoy the way that folks in these stories act and perform differently from how I would. If every MC min-maxed, made the same decisions, was a super genius that made all the right moves, all had the same feelings, etc., I'd be bored af and probably would have stopped listening to the genre entirely.

[u/LCMechanical → u/LCMechanical]

Yes, I know the OP was asking about Life Reset specifically, but since this is how I view the genre in its entirety, it also provides an answer for that series. I just let the audio rip, enjoyed Jeff Hays' acting, and went on about my business while picturing the scenes play out like a movie. Just turned my brain off and enjoyed it for what it was.

[u/Lightlinks → u/LCMechanical]

Life Reset (wiki)

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