Isekai Mokushiroku Mynoghra: Hametsu no Bunmei de Hajimeru Sekai Seifuku
Apocalypse Bringer Mynoghra: World Conquest Starts with the Civilization of Ruin

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I was very on board with this story at first. I thought it would basically be Overlord, but it's a 4X game instead of an MMO and that's a lot of what we got in the first volume. I will say that the characters and world building leave quite a bit to be desired though.

Takuto, the MC, is not a very deep character. He was hospitalized by a terminal illness in his world and because of that he has a communication disorder so he's only able to talk to his one always-present companion, the video game character Atou. Other than that he's mostly just ... a generic shut-in isekai protag. The best part of his character imo is when he's talking about the game he got isekai'd into, Eternal Nations. He was a total fanatic of this game and was the #1 rank player for the Mynoghra civ. Hearing him reminisce about his exploits in-game while planning and strategizing for his current kingdom is also similar to Ainz and it's most of what he does. But Takuto isn't really that important because a large part of these novels put the focus on other characters (once again, much like Overlord). I won't go through all of the inhabitants of Mynoghra but I'd say they're mostly decent, good but not great. Atou is pretty cool and the twins were interesting, but the rest were sorta forgettable and all the characters are pretty shallow.

For the most part I started reading this because I was looking forward to seeing how Mynoghra would develop their cities and technology, and how combat would play out between the different kingdoms with the systems from the game. Then the end of volume 2 came along and that kinda went out the window.

------------SPOILERS------------

So, the twist at the end of volume 2 and throughout volume 3 is that there are a bunch of other games and people that got isekai'd into this world (though not all games have an isekai'd person and not every person was isekai'd into a game). Honestly, I thought that premise sounded as good or potentially better than the original. The first example we see, JRPG characters fighting Eternal Nations characters, is a pretty good proof of concept for the idea and gave me hope that we'd see more of these interesting and intelligent confrontations between different game genres. However, after finishing volume 3 I'm less hopeful about this series future. There's this big, kinda gratuitous event in the middle of the novel that I won't spoil; basically I just think it was really poorly written, I don't hate the development from a story standpoint but hopefully whenever it gets adapted to manga (it's like 2 or 3 chapters away as of writing) I hope they make it easier to follow and less cringe. In general I think these novels would benefit a lot from better translations, idk what term the younger twin uses to address the older twin (I think it's ne-sama) but someone thought it was a good idea to translate it as "Big Sista" which is some incredible, probably unintentional, comedy since they're Dark Elves. Well, that wasn't really so bad, my main gripe with the story was the ending. All this talk of gods, then Takuto makes a glock (I hate this trope in isekai), and then there's that Kirito lookin dude with his slave girl. Just a bunch of red flags coming at you rapid-fire. At least the succubi were entertaining, I'm looking forward to seeing them again.

---------END OF SPOILERS---------

My rating after the end of volume 2 would've probably been an 8 or 9, but with the way the story is going now there's a lot of elements I'm uncertain about and I hope future volumes don't mess it up like I can easily imagine them doing. At least I can say that now the story has differentiated itself from Overlord and is doing something (afaik) pretty unique. Overall I'd recommend this series to fans of isekai and 4X games. I'm just hoping there's a good payoff to all this buildup and the series doesn't finish with me saying "It would've been better if they stuck with being an Overlord clone".

Apocalypse bringer Mynoghra - it does not bring much new to the table except for the twist that the main leader is a blob of abyssal darkness, which makes for interesting depictions and reactions but quickly become either normal or old.

The plot follows a familiar game structure many isekais have done and the characters make for a cute albeit evil couple. Mynoghra is more interested with the characters connecting with each other, rather than with the audience, leading to moments in the novel feeing like you’re looking at a bunch of chummy old friends through a glass pane. The other characters are pretty ... one dimensional, bowing down to the ultimate God-like figure that is our mc (who looks like he couldn’t be any more stereotypical when drawn in his human form)

Though the themes of romance and evilness aren’t quite so common in isekai/fantasy, they have been explored much better, as seen in Spice and Wolf or Overlord. In fact, the main gist of Mynoghra seems eerily similar to Overlord. Namely, the similarity of powerful evil beings in new unfamiliar lands somewhat based off their respective novels’ games, with a group of fantasy races, seeking to build a peaceful country/kingdom. Surrounding races usually cower in fear or awe of these supreme beings.

However, there are some twists here and there that help distinguish itself from its predecessors, and the plot direction seemed decently rational. The names are somewhat cheesy but it’s acceptable in an ever-growing pool of isekai light novels needing to differentiate themselves with unique terms and names.

The first and second volumes were rather cookie cutter and I contemplated basing my review on just the first two lest I drop the series out of boredom, but by the time I finished the third volume, things started to really pick up.

SPOILER.

Only in the third volume did the twist of other games going against each other makes for really interesting scenarios, and I might look forward to some more of that.

END OF SPOILER.

Other than one twist, the story did not feel al too original or captivating. To be frank, if you’ve not read Overlord, what’re you doing? Go read it. But if you’ve not experienced the evil side triumphing, this will at least satisfy that craving somewhat.. still go read Overlord. In the end, Mynogrha felt too inspired and borrowed quite a few aspects from its older “evil-beings-in-an-isekai” brother.

At first, I thought it was interesting. Sure, it gave me Overlord LITE vibes, but it was all right. But things started to spin out of control when more and more of it's premise started to come into play.

If you really want to know my thoughts on it, well....

Characters feel very flat, and it tries to capture the charm of certain tropes but doesn't exactly give me all that much reason to care about them. I feel like the series fails to invest properly in the characters who'd have the most pay off, and that leaves a lot of things incredibly lacking.

The attention feels ... really scattered. It spends a lot of it's time focusing on the main character, but there are breaks to the POV of other characters that develop no attachment and no interest because the character lacks any charm inherent to themself. In many cases, it feels like the cuts might be entirely unnecessary.

The premise kinda sucks. It's basically a story about game genre vs. game genre. Each character is themed after a different kind of game, but again, the lack of individual charm ends up making the characters feel bland or down right weird. Their powers are, more often than not, just downright bullshit. And usually just feel like thinly veiled plot reasons to have things happen.

The sad thing is that it plays at a cool concept - using strategies from a video game to conquer the world. But it bogs itself down with this idea that every major block in the road has to be based on another kind of game, whether that be an RPG, DND, or a Hentai Game.... The main character has some interesting moments, but he's largely boring and what you would imagine as your stereotypical Isekai protag. He inspires no intrigue as a character outside his knack for strategy.

All things considered, this series is just barely escaping the category of "mid beyond belief" with some last minute saving developments, but it's far too much "Game World Isekai" for me to consider it a good series.

So yeah, it's Overlord for people who enjoy very watered down versions of Overlord. It's nothing incredibly revolutionary or intriguing, and mostly fails to capture a good story beat for the latter half of the four novels I read...