The Return of the Prodigious Swordmaster

3.5-4/5

Honestly, it’s pretty well established by his former position that the MC was sufficiently well-informed in his past life that he has the knowledge and experience to make complex plans and re-orient his plans in this life. However, it’s jarring at best to have him just go “Ah, this person who the readers have 0 knowledge of can help!” so often. A Deus Ex Machina damn near every chapter. I feel like the author is using the regression as a free pass to write whatever the hell they want as they go instead of planning anything out.

An easy solution: A single moment of the MC sitting down and planning — laying out their thought process to themselves and thus to the reader — would go really far in making this a far more enjoyable read. Especially if they go over a contingency or two AND think about how other players in the world would react to the changes they make to the timeline. They just have things too well planned out and the knowledge they’re taking from the former timeline should slowly become less and less useful as they change more and more about the way things progress.

In fact, this is missing in a lot of regression stories and really holds the genre back.