Tags: Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Shounen, Isekai

A Battle to the Death Between Game Mechanics: SLG VS RPG!

Starting at full speed, Apocalypse Bringer’s third volume picks off where the second finished as Takuto and the population of Mynoghra prepare for the first true test of their skills. Not only will they be going up against another kingdom but they’ll also have to navigate around a set of fighters playing by different rules, quite literally, as SLG goes head to head with an RPG.

This volume is almost all action for the first half. The kingdom of Mynoghra and its allies are in a tricky situation as both the main village and the town of Dragontan have come under attack leaving Takuto’s two heroes to do battle against their counterparts. Sludge Atou comes face to face with the demon general of ice, Ice Rock, whilst Isla, the Queen of Bugs faces a tough battle against the demon general of fire, Flamin.

As these battles take place, the author makes good use of these scenes to showcase the differences in play styles and mechanics between RPGs and strategy-based games. For the most part, this means showing the shortcomings of the RPG style in comparison to a strategy-based games highlighting the limitations of summons and move sets against the variety and army focused fighting in their respective strategy game. This does mean an overwhelming victory for Atou although not one without injury for her as she once again falls upon her cocky nature. Isla’s battle follows much the same formula until the end as the author uses this as an opportunity to showcase one of the only mechanics where RPGs get the upper hand as well as delivering the series’ first emotional gut-punch, the unavoidable death scene.

I’m in two minds about this plot thread and its use so early on in the series. On the one hand, this is a pretty unique way to kill off a character during a battle fantasy series like this one. However, on the other hand, it still doesn’t stop the death from feeling a little cheap, Isla was in no way ever losing that battle and it seems like more of a forced way to give the twins some sort of hero power. Moreover, I feel as though this was way too early a point to kill off her character given that we haven’t had that many scenes with her as she was only introduced towards the end of the second volume. I think it would’ve had more emotional weight if we’d have had some more scenes between Isla and the twins making their eating of her corpse to gain her power all the more traumatic and more of a sucker punch to the gut.

For the second half of the novel, we’re first treated to a more focused view of the dark elf twins. Whilst they may have got an upgrade to hero, the grief that they both feel drive them to a special berserker mode of their new Witch of Regret abilities. As a result, they end up crushing the other two demon generals in quick succession. This then develops into more world-building as their rampage is brought to a quick end by a strange character who has seemingly been reincarnated from Japan.

As the final third of the novel takes form, we finally learn the true nature of this world and that it has seemingly been created as a way to hold a battle royale style tournament between different game mechanics and different genres of manga and light novels. This is certainly a more unique take on the fantasy genre as the author gears up several different genres to do battle. We have the likes of the RPG and SLG, but we’re also shown an isekai corner, an eroge corner and even a group playing on the mechanics of tabletop games. Unlike Mynoghra’s kingdom, however, each of these groups seems to have had a prerogative from the God in control of this world, so it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out later on in the series.

Overall, Apocalypse Bringer’s third volume finally brings all the pieces of the puzzle together whilst not skimping out on the promised action/fight scenes and the inevitable emotional kick this series needed to set up the stakes of this world. As we move into the fourth volume, Takuto and his comrades find a new sense of vigour and create a new cheat for themselves as they prepare to go up against the myriad of different games and fantasy genres that await them.