The Runesmith

Detailed..not boring and its the kind of story wherein you ask yourself..what;s next? new goal? new enemy? new ability,,? Definitely the Plot thickens every Chapter.. :) Hoping there's more dialogue and MC more relationships to happen since he came from our World with better communication and more civilized. Kudos to author..Keep up the Great Work!

Ok, so, I'll begin with the bad then go to the good:

Prose is not great, but I wasnt expecting that.

Many grammar mistakes and poor sentence structure consistently.

Poor punctuation. You will find missing commas and periods at the end of paragraphs all the time.

Trope-y dialog sometimes.

This is personal, but it bothers me when there are timeskips in stories and the character in question basically autopilots without any other things happening.

Overexplanation, especially for races... we are reading plotgenre.com, I THINK most people know what dwarves, elves and goblins are...

Seriously, if you are going for a electronics analog, research it... again, this is probably addressed further on...

Ok...  with that out of the way, what I liked:

The rune mechanics are interesting to me.

 Story has potential to subvert the tropes set up, so I can still hope

No harem yet, thank GOD

Now, a few spoiler criticisms (SPOILERS FOR UP TO Chapter 25!!!!)

My veredict is basically: If grammar or sentence structure mistakes are a deal breaker for you, don't read it, otherwise, if the idea of pseudo circuitry magic system appeals to you, give it a shot.

I liked it and now I don't.(Chapter 45)

Great world-building, pretty interesting characters. BUT. I didn't particularly enjoy spending 5-10 minutes trying to decipher dialogue because the author thinks they're smart for emulating some kind of accent in writing form for around 5 chapters. I don't particularly like how an incompetent, weak, greedy, prideful, unattractive, tsundere archetype female character recurrently appear and make the MC's life harder then it needs to be because of plot. Neither do I particularly like how the MC is so weak-willed towards this character when he's shown to hold his own with almost every other character. 

Like bruh, sure being unattractive is not something that matters that much in writing, but it would explain a character's attitude. But this gnome acts like an entitled, tsuntsun with a bad attitude, have no self-awareness, and is greedy beyond redemption. Yet the MC calls her honorable and says that she activates his "teenage hormones"?.

The fantasy and game-lit aspects of this story are fairly typical, told from the narrator's perspective.

The plot and characters are the main highlights, and they’re what keep me reading. However, the execution could be improved. There’s too much narrative at times, which makes the pacing feel slow. The foreshadowing is a bit blatant, but it adds an intriguing layer to the story. It’s fun to guess what might happen next, and it builds anticipation for the future.

The grammar is a bit unusual, but I see it as part of the author’s style. It doesn’t break immersion, so it’s not a big issue for me.

The MC feels a bit mechanical, but that fits with his character. His interactions with others are handled well, and the side characters are interesting. They have their own goals and motivations, which makes their presence in the MC’s life feel natural and justified.

The title suggests a crafting-focused MC, and that’s exactly what we get—along with much more. The expanding world-building and increasing power levels are fantastic. The plot drives the story forward without relying on plot armor, which strengthens the overall experience.

The author has been consistent with releases and shows clear improvement over time. I’m excited for future chapters and new works from them.

Update:
After almost three years, I can confidently say that the story and pacing have held up well. The characters remain consistent but continue to evolve, which is impressive. However, there’s a noticeable disconnect whenever the MC’s old family is involved.

The story still leans heavily on narrative with relatively little dialogue, though that might just be my personal preference. Many cultivation-style novels, including the author’s previous works, tend to be narrative-heavy, so it’s not unexpected.

I really like the runesmith idea but man I got bored later and I have decided to drop it and move on, it just feels so I don't know like I had to read this with doom music and you might think that is a good thing and it is, but not for this novel, I said this before with my other reviews but I hope other people like it and enjoy and give it a try before listening to me.

Read over 200 chapters and still hooked. Only stop at natural stoping point to let unread chapters grow. I hate just to read as chapters are released.  I like how MC movies around.  Not set in one place. Author on third setting and feels like going to be a fourth.

I like the protagonist well enough and the story is interesting.
There is a clear progression path and a clear goal defined.

Events happening are interesting and mostly add something to the story.

However, the writing style started out well enough but gradually turns horrible. The sheer amount of overexplanation makes it a pain to read. Every action taken by any character is described in atleast 2 sentences with different wording for it then to be explained as to why they did it. It feels like it is written for a ten year old.

Chapters can be cut by 50% and nothing will be missed. I started skimming the last few chapters and skipped a few parts and I missed nothing of note. It is starting to feel like "Blood Warlock: Succubus partner in the Apocalypse". It's writing also started out well enough but gradually everything gets explained atleast twice and every small piece of information is pretty much reiterated every 2 chapters.

The only thing that bugs me, is that the side characters are deep, different and evolving, but the main character never seems to ask them anything about them. Maybe it's because it's his story and there's is just not as important, but since it's told from his perspective and he is really investing himself more and more for them it just feels (and don't get me wrong, it's something I am struggling with myself) egocentric. How have you been? How are the kids? Did you siblings help as of late? Maybe the MC is a little bit autistic, maybe even a lot and it is obvious for everyone inside the story and outside, but I believe he is changing so much, that its strange that this feels left out. 

Still a 5 star story^^

A well paced progression story. Tier concepts with multipliers is an interesting approach to explaining jumps in capabilities. Also a good balance between slice of life style growth periods and adventure and action. It doesn't attempt what many do, and often succumb in to. That is constant action and growth, which most often is unsustainable, and sometimes leads to authors scaling back a protagonists development or erasing it completely. I personally despise the, "It was all just a dream', cop out. Although it's more often couched as some thinly veiled unavoidable tragedy. It's especially offensive in a litrpg style story as numerical progression is part of the appeal and so the opposite happening is that much more a kick in the n*ts. I saw many mediocre reviews and while I won't claim this story doesn't have flaws, I don't believe it has any of the huge mistakes that several higher rated stories do. I would rate at 4 1/2, with 5 being the very best stories on this site. 

Not sure if English is the author's first language because much of the writing feels that way. The big positive here that they stuck to it, page after page with some improvement to write a lot of story which resembles isekai anime in very distinctive ways.

If you like a story about a guy going through multiple builds of armor & weaponry with a mage focus, this is perhaps for you. The Iron Man comparisons are not unwarranted.

The progression & the world building is what gets the reader through this story despite its significant issues. In some ways, elements of this progression, like the location changes that go hand in hand with the growth of the character, contribute to a sense of that progression a lot better than in other stories. On the negative side, not all of it seems consistent probably because there could be a better understanding of how things work.

Characters can act iffy at times but you can still get past it. The anime style behaviour can have characters feel awkward at times.

The style often has poor pacing like where the author can meander on about random hypotheticals while in the middle of an action scene, just to prolong it. It helps when it comes across as the character hesitating during said action but then they keep on dithering long after the reader might infer such a point.

The negatives listed feel like too many but I'm still reading so it can't be all bad. 2.5/5