True Smithing by Jared Mandani
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Yet another LitRPG that had me grinning from ear to ear throughout the entire read. I had sooo much fun.

Why?

SMITHING, my dear friend.

Take all the endless joy of breaking Skyrim with your master craftsmanship, combine it with a real-life smithing master who joins a game that allows him to get tons more experience by doing all real work the hard way in the true-to-life simulation, and we've got a massively broken character. He doesn't even fight except a handful of times. His skills and his loves are all about the craft and I can't care less that his main foe is almost comic-book in flavor.

I just looooved all the talk about armor pieces, metal composition, the advantages and disadvantages of certain design schematics, and even a little skewering of game design in general. It was all in good fun and I was right there for it.

Yes, there was some leveling up, too, but in reality, this was a true power-leveling adventure. Electing to do all the work yourself in the simulation is a REAL game-breaker if you've got the chops. :)

Ah, pure fantasy, distilled wish-fulfillment fantasy.


View all my reviews