Shangri-La Frontier: Kusoge Hunter, Kamige ni Idoman to su
Shangri-La Frontier

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Shocked how underrated this series is for being a pretty big hit in Japan, like MMOs and wish more series were about the strategy and teamwork aspect other than just powering up to beat the villain with friendship? This is a series for you! Our Main Character (username: Rakurou) is a gaming recluse who only plays the shittiest games on the market for the thrill of challenging himself until one day he joins the most popular MMO in Japan at the time, seeking a new thrill in an actual well made game for once and uncovers the many mysteries about this mysterious AAA MMO's world ... and it's bosses. Yet upon arrival he is spawn killed by a world boss and cursed to only be able to wear a headpiece and basic knives, now having an even greater challenge due to his near permanent nerf until the boss is defeated. The games plot is tied to many world events that no single player has ever finished due to the high skill gap and challenge required. Outstanding action and detail about the games mechanics and world are given, the grind is shown off from enemies to weapon crafting, and the game lore of NPCs who are almost too real at times always keep things fresh. One extremely cool thing is that Rakurou will log off and play other games to come up with other strategies and we see what other kings of games he plays, one in particular is a cheaply made fighting game in the vein of Hokuto no Ken, or another castle plundering MMO which has had it's economy destroyed due to toxic players. The first raid boss arc was just finished as of writing this and it went in detail on abilities, game strategies, team work/co-op, all done in quite a long stretch of chapters, each going into different phases of the fight and the detail on the bosses attacks, buffs, defense, and triggers. This has me extremely excited for future encounters and what's to come next.

Shangri-La Frontier is essentially the story of "Gamer plays a video game." While the story isn’t bad, there’s no real stake or substantial plot. All stories rely on at least one pillar: plot, character, gimmick, genre. The problem with this story is that it doesn’t have a plot beyond “guy plays a VRMMORPG”. To put it another way it’s like a manga version of watching someone stream a game on Twitch or even watching a walkthrough of the game online.
The beginning chapters are basically gaming but the story does improve dramatically after two more main characters are introduced and the "party" is formed. There is ... also the "romantic interest" with the one-sided crush on the MC who adds a nice bit of flavor to the story but has yet to develop. The manga is good for the genre but unremarkable in its plot. The story shines with its world building and characters who take a while to warm up but once they do have incredible comedic chemistry and humor. The art is the same as it also improves to become more expressive and entertaining.
As far as I can tell the MC's only character trait is "gamer" and he has nothing remarkable going on in his real life that would make him stand out from the millions of other gamers in the world besides his tendency to play "trash games". it doesn’t rely on a ridiculous gimmick but it doesn’t have anything that really engages the reader. The author clearly wanted to write a down to earth story about vr gaming with a well structured realistic video game world that doesn’t rely on gimmicks or tropes, but it puts it at a disadvantage if it doesn’t have a strong plot. The characters are great but their personalities and "gamer" traits can make the dialogue a tedious slog. For example, there is a lot of exposition where the characters have to explain core gameplay elements to the reader as well as the mechanics found in RPG's. In other words there is a lot of exposition to shift through that has little to do with the plot and more flexing how thought out the fake RPG world is.
The biggest issue is that there is no conflict or stakes beyond just playing the game against other players which isn't exactly engaging storytelling unless you invested in the characters in the first place. The second issue is the combat. This being a RPG story there is a lot of fighting monsters and true to the realistic progression the story implements to make it as RPG-ish as possible, the fighting can go on way longer than it should. If you've ever played an RPG and fought a "secret boss" then you know that they can take a while to beat. And this story doesn't cut corners like other stories in the genre.
I enjoyed this story quite a bit. Compared to other stories of this genre, it takes longer to accomplish missions or tasks but the characters interactions and the creativity of the RPG world itself make up for it.

Shangri-La Frontier is a manga that drew me in real good at the start and held my attention pretty well for the next 96 chapters. This author very obviously knows his stuff when it comes to action RPGs and put a ton of thought into creating the imaginary video game this manga is named after. Discovering more and more about this game world from the perspective of Sunraku was very entertaining for me for a time and I enjoyed the steady drip of exciting quests, new locations, mechanics, equipment and so forth that we expect to see in a good open world RPG. Sunraku himself ... is also a rather novel character to me as someone who has honed his skills through the obsessive enjoyment of poorly designed trash games.

With that all that being said, I did slowly but steadily lose interest in this series until finally deciding to drop it once and for all on chapter 96. It never failed to continue presenting what seems like a very good video game, but the thing is that this author isn't actually making a game, but writing a story. He has one part of a good story with excellent and thoughtful world building, but he's unfortunately not nearly as good at writing interesting and compelling characters to drive that story forward.

The author has populated the world with tons of characters, but none of them really go beyond the stereotypes they're based off. Their dialogue and interactions all felt painfully shallow and predictable to me after a while and I didn't feel invested in any of their personal stories, not that I ever actually learned very much about any of them across 96 whole chapters. I did say that Sunraku was a novel character at first, but playing shitty games and being a god gamer is really his entire personality. I also started to get bored by how Sunraku is effortlessly so much better than the millions of others supposedly playing Shangri-La Frontier, including those who are also the best of the best and playing the game much longer than him. He starts to feel exactly like the "Invincible Hero" trope that One Punch Man parodies so well, and this is despite the fact that the author did try to give him weaknesses as a glass canon.

To conclude, I don't think it's an awful show. The author did some things very well and others rather poorly. Some people aren't going to be nearly as bothered by these templated characters and that's fine. They just failed at being interesting characters to me and it slowly but progressively started to outweigh the fun I was having witnessing the interesting game world the author thought up.