Pick Me Up, Infinite Gacha

First of all, I need to acknowledge the good bits that this piece does and why it earned its popularity (no spoiler).

• The early survival arc actually lands. Those first brutal first chapters create real tension and make the world feel truly hostile, and the character deaths in the opening carry emotional weight.
• The action sequences are dynamic and visually strong, much better than 80% of the stuff found here.
• The overarching mystery and lore breadcrumbs are unpredictable enough to hook readers who love constant reveals.
• The meta angle of a protagonist being controlled by a clueless new player is unique enough to stand out among the usual regression/transmigration manhwas on this site.

However, some things are just annoying enough that it breaks the story for me.

• The gacha loop unintentionally trains readers not to care. When characters permanently die but are constantly replaced, emotional investment becomes pointless in latter chapters. Death slowly becomes a spectacle instead of consequence: early deaths matter, later ones feel like disposable churn. You end up only caring about the main cast because we know they mostly won’t die, and even if the author is bold enough to make one of these staple characters perish, it would be used as an emotional (and cheap) heart-breaking moments instead of actually reasonable development.
• The MC’s old account is absurdly powerful, yet the story only uses it when convenient. It’s a built-in deus ex machina with no meaningful limitations. Worse, author keeps inventing artificial handicaps for the MC despite giving him a stash of weapons capable of Excalibur-tier destruction. Then, the story increasingly relies on momentum by escalating stakes and challenges while pretending that MC doesn’t have the god-like old account of his. In other words, the author just wants to create drama for drama’s sake.
• The biggest narrative with high promise and yet not delivering it is MC’s sword. The whole forging process is hyped up like a mythical coming of the age, but all MC gets is an indestructible stick functionally weaker than gear he already owns.