The language used in this is chinese, which can make it hard to understand, offputting as well as subtitle quality/availability fairly limited. It can also be a breath of fresh air since it sounds very differently.
I'll use the word Anime rather than "chinese cartoon" due to ease.
I will review and score this while only looking directly at the anime itself (At its' current stage!), but I might add notes regarding both the manhua and the LN. The story will be clarified a bit more for understanding of our MC.
Story: 7
We learn that the MMORPG Glory is an extremely popular game. This game as an incredibly popular pro-scene where there are 20 teams belonging to the Glory Professional Alliance (GPA). It's quite similar to LoL's LCS where the lowest teams get relegated, and the top teams go to playoffs and the champion is decided.
Our main character - Ye Xiu(Ye Qiu) is pretty much the GOD of the game. He's been playing the game ever since its' release and has been in the team Excellent Era since the beginning of the GPA. He has since then won 3 consecutive championships with the team, but the team performance also declined greatly greatly until we reach the "current".
Apart from the MAL synopsis, the story pretty much revolves around Ye Xiu, showing his skills and his knowledge of the game as he plays his unique character build and gathers players with high potential to play with and teach. During his levelling, he also needs an extreme amount of materials to upgrade his weapon with, and takes advantage of his own skill to sell his services expensively to all the rich great guilds, as well as punish those who oppose him.
The story is a bit rushed, we see mere seconds of scenes that should maybe have been given a full minute to fully catch the author's intent.
Art: 10
The art in this show is top-notch. The CGI used in it is actually very good.
The art quality can be seen clearly in the design of stuff that comes from the real world, e.g. their keyboards, or the whole netcafé design. Small details go a long way when it comes to quality.
Character art quality is excellent, ingame characters look quite similar to their players, and every cast character is well designed.
I know a lot of people dislike the use of recycled animation, but one has to remember that this is a game. Things SHOULD look the same or very similar. This is very apparent in the end of EP5 where he throws a goblin into the archers the same way he did in EP3. There are also a few reused frames such as Ye Xiu slowly turning around, but I wouldn't pick on that as a big minus. I also understand that saying that "It should look that way" due to it being a game is also wrong since it's probably tied to budget saving, but the pros outweigh the cons in this case. (BIAS)
Sound: 8
The OP/ED in this show are good, and the voice actors fit the character behaviour quite well. For example the high pitched voice of the chit-chatting Chen Guo, or the slightly uninterested voice of Ye Xiu himself.
The reason why I pick away a few points here are the quirky soundtracks that play at points throughout the episodes. They don't really fit in to the environment that well.
Characters: 8
This show has yet to show its' full splendor when it comes to characters, we have yet to see barely anything of the pro-scene teams who will be interacted with a bit more in the coming episodes.
Ye Xiu has also not shown his "Encyclopedia of Glory" and "Master tactician" titles to their full extent. It is most likely due to the time restrictions for how quickly paced they chose this show to be.
Then we have Steamed Bun Invasion. Such a fun character, very well adapted from the novel. It's clear that they put a lot of effort into his quirky behaviour rather than keeping the tone that the slow and calculated Ye Xiu sets.
A problem with this show is the lack of character development, as well as the time limitations in place for just this. Another small problem would be how stupidly characters like Tang Rou act - if you work at a netcafe with a boss who talks about Glory every single day, shouldn't you know at least a bit about the Glory pro scene?
Enjoyment: 10
This show is a blast to watch. Even though some soundtracks are a bit quirky, plot and characters not fully elaborated upon, the story not reaching its' potential for a while and many scenes obviously meant for pure "Preview material" and product placement, this show still caught me hands down. It's an enjoyable watch that shows a wide spread of characters. The characters are so different yet still blend together quite nicely. Ye Xiu sees potential in people, he sees both their strengths and weaknesses and it's fun to watch how he reacts when Steamed Bun Invasion does something stupid or Chen Guo scolds him.
Overall: 8.6
The thing I liked the most about the LN was the way that you could recognize the abilities they use. And in some way, the recycled e.g. gatling gun animations give a clear representation of that. In EP6 we see the same ability used multiple times in different shots and angles, and since we're used to seeing it repeated in a specific angle we now see the use of the same ability in a different manner. I look forward to if they would use the name of abilities to signify combo CC moves in the future rather than just 10 seconds of combat and an explosion.
While I really enjoy the show, I still fail to see just what it wants to show - a few examples of what I mean would be: MC OP? Teamwork? MC outsmarting everybody? They are all things that are very apparent in the LN, and so far we have only seen the MC being OP and a few tactical calls like he is buffing his team just by being there. Maybe it is too early in the show to see all of these things combined.
