Title: The Legend of Randidly Ghosthound
Author: puddles4263
Rating: M
Genre: Adventure, Comedy, Cultivation & LitRPG
Fandom: Original Universe
Pairings:
Summary: As the system initializes, the world shifts. Geography is rearranged and mixed, and levels and stats are instituted across the globe. On that night, one young man was walking through an underground tunnel, his mind on the small problems of his easy life. Because of his location during the shift, he starts in a dungeon far above his level, with no knowledge or teacher, or Newbie Village to guide him. Without a class, he struggles simply to survive in this world changed by its new connection to the Nexus. But struggle he will, for he is Randidly Ghosthound, and this is only how his legend begins...

Link: Royal Road

If you like the genre, and are willing to overlook / look past some flaws, this is a long, very enjoyable story (over 1200 chapters at time of posting, around 2.2 million words). I've read all of the ones that are publicly posted, to date.

Let's address the elephant in the room first. The name "Randidly" is terrible. The author and character both acknowledge this, and there is some provided in-story explanation for this. With that being said, Randidly is known for most of the story by his last name, "Ghosthound", which makes this much more readable. I know a few readers have either used Chrome extensions to change his name, or downloaded as a text file and edited it. I was able to overlook this once I started, although the name is what put me off from reading this initially.

What this Story Does Well:

- I like the initial setup. Although I haven't read a lot of LitRPGs yet, I like the idea of the system trying to force him to conform. The consequences of being non-conformant continue to escalate, as the story progresses, including the latest public arc. Without getting into spoilers, it is not something that is just brushed off.

- I like the character progression. Although Ghosthound is pretty overpowered at first, you do see a nice balance of opponents and adversaries who keep him in check. The power growth is fairly consistent, but I like the idea early on that versatility is the largest power. This does go by the wayside a bit as the story continues.

- The later plot is one I really enjoy, as you dig deeper into what "The System" actually is.

- Nice mix of action and other types of challenges.

What this Story Could Do Better:

- There's an arc where this story tends to lose readers. Unfortunately, this is fairly early on in the story, relatively speaking (I think late 200's), where he is removed from Earth. This arc is abruptly introduced, and doesn't seem to fit the big picture well. I know there are some readers from here that have dropped out around this point. If you do make it past that arc, it does get a lot better, and the events from the arc are woven into the story in a way that actually improves the story later on. It just does not seem that way at the time.

- The name, which we've already addressed.

- Some of the writing could be tightened up. It's pretty well written, from a grammar standpoint. However, we could do with less, on some pieces.

Overall Thoughts:

This is not a perfect story, by any means. This is an enjoyable and long story, which is rare enough that I went ahead and recommended it. I would give this story a 3.5 / 5, rounded up to a 4.

 

Man, I tried reading this twice already but I didn't even make it to chapter 100 in either try. I like the general idea of the story (world integration into a RPG setting) and there's other stories that do it very well.

But the main character is just so edgy and annoying. I actually wondered for a while whether the MC was supposed to have some sort of mental disability but I think it's just that the author wants his main character to be this edgy. I mean the MC's name is Randidly Ghosthound. His actual name. That was the first red flag for me.

I always wonder what people think when they write characters like this because IIRC the other characters seem fairly normal. It's just the MC who is super weird.

2/5 from me because I think I would really like the story if the MC was written like a normal person.

 

Definitely understandable. For what it's worth, the main character does get a lot better over time. That being said, I can see why 100 chapters in and still disliking the characterization is enough to put anyone off. And yeah, the name sucks, no disagreement about that.

 

I've been reading this over the last week or so and it's ok? It's well written enough that I'm not put off by the writing style itself, but it has some major issues.

Things I liked though were the ideas involved. It hits lots of things I like to see with worldbuilding. I've seen most of them in other works true, but I'm pretty sure this predates them so points for that. Some of the side characters are great and I can appreciate the scale of the whole thing - it's stupidly long and has kept enough of a plot to keep me invested so far. The action is well done as well.

The issues with the story I'll divide into minor and major.

Minor
-Firstly the name. Randidly Ghosthound is the stupidest name I've ever heard. Randidly I can sort of see and I'm fine with the explanation for it (his mum being crazy) but Ghosthound? It doesn't help that 90% of the time he goes by "the Ghosthound" which makes my eyes bleed from the sheer teenage edge every time I see it.
-The author is a bit too scattered? It's maybe just because of the scope but I've read up to 700ish and there are 5 only vaguely connected stories going on right now? It wasn't as bad earlier but it's getting worse.
-Randidly gets maybe a bit too lucky? I guess it's part of the whole appeal of progression fantasy but for all he complains about slow grinding he actually levels absurdly fast compared to anyone else.
-Randidly's skillsheet gets printed out in full frequently. It's normally at the bottom of the chapter so you can just skip it and I can't see why you wouldn't. It's an unreadable mess of numbers. He has trimmed it back a couple of times but it's still pretty ridiculous.
-The main character complains constantly although I suppose this is a facet of my Major issues.

Major
-Randidly is a horrible and unlikable person. Like just the worst. He started out as an angry guy who rages against everyone and evolves into an angrier guy who rages against everything. He's incredibly hypocritical and I've skipped over large bits where he's just complaining about anything and everything. His whole purpose seems to be to rage at the system because it told tried to make him get a class? Didn't give him good enough rewards for a path?
-Everyone is a horrible person. Like literally everyone. It's impressive how despicable everyone is portrayed. There's like 5 people out of hundreds who I can think of that aren't outright horrible people. It gets a bit tiresome?
-The main antagonist seems to be the system itself. Which gets a bit annoying because it almost goes out to justify the edginess of the main character? He has to be a loner (except when it's more convenient for him to not).

Overall I'd say 2/5. It's readable and has good ideas but has deepseated problems. I think with a different more likeable lead it'd be much better.

 

2/5

The main character never gets better as a person, he drags down the story with his awkwardness, bad choices, and weirdo personality. Completely unrelatable garbage person that never improves.

There are a lot of other problems of course, but if he was a good character this story would be much more bearable, unfortunately, his decisions never follow common sense and the reasons and mindset for some of his most grating choices are never really explained.

tl;dr - Randidly sucks to the point where nearly all of my favourite moments in this story was when people called him out for being terrible

 

4/5

I very much like this story. I view it as a cultivation story first of all so I kind of give it a pass on the side characters being kind of shallow, the overwhelming focus being on the MC, and the meandering plot. I like how creative the author is about fleshing out and building up his abilities bit by bit. The action is entertaining and the system is interesting. The author is also pretty prolific and will usually drop 14 chapters every 2 weeks.

There are certainly stale parts of the story but the writing is decent enough that I've been able to get through them all.

Overall if you like cultivation novels then this is probably one of the best Western ones despite not outwardly appearing so.

 

Some time has passed since my review, and I've thought it over and decided to change my rating.

1/5. Even for a litrpg, Randidly is not good.

 

Yeah, the Spear Arc. I actually really liked that as well, especially later on. It was just pretty abrupt, and I know that that lost some early readers.

Honestly, having seen how much other terrible LitRPG stuff is out there, this one is probably more of a solid 4 for me as well. Other than the fact that the name Randidly is so bad it has become a Discord meme, I agree with a lot of your points about him being a lot more tolerable than many other protagonists in the genre.

(sorry about that, mis-tagged). @Ched

 

The name Randididididily gives me physical pain.

 

I was only able to read it after @Dryops did me a solid and sent an edited epub with his name changed to Rand.

 

This story is awful. I read up to chapter 476 and it doesn’t get any better. In most stories that I hate there are at least some redeeming qualities. A good character, or setting, or idea. There’s none of that here.


The worst part of this story are the characters, though I would hesitate to use that word to describe them. Most of them are characterized so poorly that you can describe them in a single sentence. Buff guy who likes sex. Dying witch trying to escape the system. Man trying to prove himself worthy of girl’s love. Even the characters who I didn’t loathe weren’t well developed. Shal and Ace had at least a little depth to them. They weren’t good characters by any means, but I didn’t skim their POVs at least.


Randidly is one of the worst protagonists I have ever read. Socially useless, endlessly hypocritical, treated as right by the narrative even when it doesn’t make any fucking sense. It’s like the more annoying parts of APGTE where Cat is always right even when she isn’t. Randidly will do shit like invite the 1000 year old witch specializing in manipulating Aether who he pissed off into the part of his soul with the most Aether. And it paid off because she was only evil because the world she was in magically made her that way. Randidly didn’t even know that, which makes it even dumber. Randidly only has a couple personality traits. He’s angry at the system and wants to destroy it for reasons, despite admitting to himself that the system made him less of a loser. He wants power for power’s sake in the same way as many shitty Wuxia/LitRPG protagonists.


Other characters in this story fall into a couple archetypes. There are characters who exist to give Randidly challenges to overcome to make him look better. Other characters basically just stand around reacting to his awesomeness. Finally, there are the female characters, who all want to fuck him. Unless they are ugly or old. After all, who wouldn’t want to date somebody with the personality of a wet cardboard box?


Characters don’t really have agency in this world unless they can act in a way that makes the MC look good. It’s like how NPCs in a video game stand around to wait for the MC to talk to them. The dialogue is bad. This author wouldn’t know a character voice if it bit him on the ass. All the characters have the same tics (scratching chins and heads, etc). The characters feel like they are talking at each other instead of having a conversation.


The world itself is boring and uninspired. Even ideas that could be interesting in a competent author’s hands fall flat, like the spear user world. Of course, the author doesn’t explore that world because he’s too busy writing 20 chapter long brainless fight scenes and lists of stats and paths that don’t matter. Even shit like Lucerita, the Lucifier expy, could have been an interesting character if the author didn’t turn her into Randidly’s servant. Pages and pages are devoted to Randidly’s stats. It gets to the point where the characters are comparing stats mid fight scene. The base/society building could have been interesting, if I gave a fuck about any of these characters. They are so unlikeable that towards the end I was reading hoping that the monster would kill them all.


Nothing to like here. 1/5