Hell Difficulty Tutorial

If you’re looking for a fast-paced ‘transported to another world’ (isekai) story in the vein of Master Hunter K, Traveller’s Trial or Apocalypse: Reborn, where fighting takes up most of the narrative, then I think you’ll enjoy this story quite a bit. It made for a quick read and though there were some detractors, I really enjoyed it!

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Characters

The main character of the story is likely to be the most controversial component of this book, where he quickly proves himself as a sociopath with very little care for the others around him. If you picked up the book and was turned off by the main character, I’ll spoil things a bit and let you know that his attitude does improve some… and based on the direction of the story towards the end, I anticipate it getting even better.

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Beyond the main character, I think the breadth of characters were fairly well done. Several characters were distinct enough to stand out and hold their own, proving to be interesting add-ons to the story, with unique abilities and motivations that seemed consistent. As a small gripe, I’ll say that the characters were often used to prop up the main character, where a new transported person was introduced every few chapters.

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I’d also like to make a shout out for a character that is introduced much later in the story and quickly became a favourite. Apologies for the vagueness here, but spoiling this would be a disservice to you as a potential reader!

With all that said, I didn’t mind the sociopathic tendencies of the main character and enjoyed the character work overall! In fact, there’s a moment in the story where someone is sacrificed and I don’t think it would’ve worked had the main character been more sympathetic.

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Setting

The setting matches what you’ll generally see in this kind of story where the main character is transported into a forest, given abilities, and beset by monsters. This familiar setting is executed very well, where an entire group is brought into the tutorial and are forced to work together. As I’ve always said, execution is often the most important part of a story, and I believe the setting was executed very well.

Beyond that, the tutorial seemed to have different ‘phases’ which added variety and uniqueness that I appreciated.

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Plot

Without spoilers, there is a large tonal shift midway through the book that makes discussing plot very difficult. This tonal shift was jarring, as it slowed down the pace of the story, which was concerning since I’d enjoyed the fast pace! Frankly, it was different, but necessary: the events at the end of book one could not have been possible without the tonal shift, and I believe they were the most impactful parts of the story.

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Magic

The story has some cool concepts related to the use of magic and mana especially. Power levels seem well defined, and I enjoyed the exploration of abilities and the system as time went on. Overall, this was a high-point in the story.

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Overall

I enjoyed Hell Difficulty Tutorial and believe you will too! If you like familiar settings, driven/determined main characters, interesting magic systems and lots of cool fights, then make sure to check it out! I give the story a 4.6.