Avalon of Disaster

This manga has interesting, mostly distinct characters, rational worldbuilding, a mystery larger than the plot, and a fair amount of well-paced plot developments. Also, I liked the art and some of the relationships, and the fact that characters are not always trustworthy or straightforward.

Yet many, maybe most, of the comments were about the readers’ frustrations. They list many reasons, but IMHO the core of all the frustration is that the motivations of the MC (and several other major characters) don’t resonate with readers, even on occasions when they are explained. It seems like lots of readers feel like there were obviously better options than what people did most of the time. Some of these objections were allayed by reading later chapters, but it’s a consistent problem.

I felt frustrated but still had fun, and it’s worth noting that few of the complaining commenters seem to have dropped it. I recommend it with a warning that it doesn’t give satisfaction in the same way most mangas try to.

Summary: Top-level loner gamer wins a MMORPG contest and the reward is isekai into the game. He gets slotted into a minor villain character with a cheat that is balanced with a debuff. His game skills allow him to become OP, but in order to avoid bad ends for himself or the game world, he tries to hide his power and keep the story on track to the defeat of the Big Bad. But early on, he realises he’s not the only Player in this isekai, and they do not share his goals.