I Became the Mastermind Who Betrays the Heroines

Allow me to be the first one to review this novel!

Majestically...

I forgot to write a review 💀

This is new to me. I usually write one after finishing the novel. But I think I was sidetracked and eventually forgot to write one...

So I'm here to remedy the mistake. Since all of you, my beloved subjects, know how this Emperor rules his dynasty, I will do a systematic review focusing on action, story and romance. Number 3 is good.... yes....

I usually have more jokes to say before diving in the review, but I can't think of any good ones. Also my memory isn't the freshest, so I might make some tiny tiny errors (but they should be so minor they don't change your expectations from the reality). Finally, I won't write a long review this time, probably less than 1k words. There is not too much for me to say. It's a relatively short read and doesn't require any in-depth breakdowns for the readers to understand.  So let's jump straight into the story...

The MC which we follow in this story is transmigrated into this game. It's a hardcore video game which our MC was the giga chad at. I'm certain that he used to upload forum videos and guides on it. As you can guess by where this is going, in a turn of events he was transmigrated into the game! as the final boss...

Our Main Character, referred to as majestic golden snake by universally all of us, is this maxed out character lurking in the newbie village. He is overpowered and can basically snap his fingers like Thanos to massacre others. I believe he's called Judas Snakes. There is an instance during a playthrough in the game where he inverted the whole continents gravitational force...

Since our MC is so overpowered, you can foresee that this novel puts a heavy emphasis on the heroines instead. Our MC is trying to bloom all the heroines into their final form since their latent talent is enormous (still not as great as Judas since he could kill them easily in the game). The story plays out mostly in the academy where our MC is gaslighting these young and innocent women. Especially poor lady Vanity...

Forget Lady Vanity for now, I'll cover her later on. The story is nothing phenomenal, groundbreaking or unique. It's about an overpowered MC who tries to help the heroines become stronger so that they can defeat an evil being which is threatening to ruin the world (Let's call them Evil God since I cannot remember the correct term). However, the story is not the strong point, nor is it trying to be. As I mentioned above, the heroines are the bread and butter, the glue which holds this novel together. The story is passable, written firmly, and doesn't attempt to be anything special. It doesn’t need to be either as long as it’s enjoyable and it certainly was. If there is anything to nitpick from the story, it's that it lacks a certain element to it to hook you up. I remember taking a week break from this novel around chapter 70 since it was missing that 'something' which all novels have. That something which keeps you hooked up, relentlessly reading at 5 AM. I don't really know how to say it. But let's say that it misses a unique twist to keep things from going stale. I did get back to reading, and was enjoying everything I read. I would say it’s probably more of an unfortunate twist of events since I wasn’t feeling very mentally well whilst reading.Moving on the action, I would say it's decent-to-good. It's always present but since our MC is overpowered as heck and can one-shot every single enemy which we have faced up to now, it sometimes feels a bit lacking. I think this is an issue which all novels that feature an overpowered MC suffer from. So I won't be counting this as a flow. It's more of a genre flaw than a writing one. It's like reading a romance and complaining that there is drama. They are accompanied by each other, two sides of the same coin if you will. Seeing the female heroines fight is quite entertaining, however, since they are groomed- Ahem, I meant coached by our MC to become stronger. So it feels similar to seeing your students try to beat the kid-bullies. Entertaining to say the least.

Well, you might ask, "Sorrow, why give it a 5/5 if the story is nothing new and unique, and the action is fine but nothing exceptional?" Well.... and I answer that the romance is quite good. The female heroines were entertaining to read. We have little pilotess which is unfairly cute, her noble-self Lady Vanity which is a tsun-tsun, kuudere royal highness, younger royal highness with some fiery personality, and.... and..... and a Fox girl! and not just a fox-girl! but a maid fox-girl! kyaaaaa

So, as I was seriously mentioning our roster I forgot to mention that we also have a drunk and beautiful master... And a little yandere running a cult for us... I know I know, we hit the jackpot. We got some good love interests for sure. The romance is slow, filled with some misunderstandings too. Around 120 chapters and nothing has really flown yet. Also our MC I think is a bit dense. Not at the black-hole level, but not the sharpest tool in the shed either (unlike me who has experience in reading dense MCs and had accumulated the knowledge inside the scripture "101 ways to know if a female is trying to mate with you")

As I was eloquently saying, romance and female characters are the main points here. I think this novel deserves 4-5 stars. It's good, certainly not mindblowing, but it does everything well and is fun to read. It could have been more entertaining if the author didn’t play it safe and incorporated some unique elements to twist the story a bit. Like the blindfold in “I Became The Academy’s Blind Swordsman“, the bandages in “The World After the Bad Ending” or the demon prince identity in “The Demon Prince Goes to The Academy”. These three novels all have some uniqueness to them, like the blindfold and bandages from the first 2 novels which slowly make our MCs lose their emotions, or the demon prince identity which Reinhardt has in the third novel which creates tension and forces MC to be careful with his actions. This novel doesn’t feel like it has anything on that level. Our MC is the hidden antagonist, which could be considered as a unique element, but it’s not on par with those I mentioned. No biggie, it’s still good but it just could make that solid 5/5 into a strong 5/5.

I can see most people giving it a 3-4/5 since it does what it does well, but does nothing new. But I am a bit more generous and will give it 5 stars since I was entertained while reading it and did not really force myself to read more of it. It was a fun read overall and that is what matters when reading. The only hiccup I had was taking a mini break 70 chapters in. But as I said before, it's most probable to be a personal issue since my mental state hasn't been the greatest as of late.

I don't have anything else to add. The tl;dr is that it's good to read, certainly no game changer as of now, but still worth a read.

Who knows, the author could cook something nice, we’ll see from the future releases