6/24-7/24
I would like to start by pointing out that being "primal" is not a good word. It basically means being primitive, ape-ish, crude, rudimentary. So I don't get why Jake aka "The Primal Hunter" (all caps) is so proud of the title. Though, to be fair, his best godly pal "The Malefic Viper" also seems proud of his title despite not being malefic, like at all.
In fact, most characters don't seem to mind much about, well... Anything. Since the system arrived, people basically forgot they were once normal and either embraced being a bunch of bloodthirsty savages or became some spineless cowards that refuse to violence even in self-defence, which we later find out is encouraged if not even demanded by this "system" through what Zogarth named "Paths".
What are paths? Finding out what you're good at and only doing that, become obsessed with that and mind nothing but that until you reach godhood. Whatever that thing might be, simply growing in size, bootlicking gods, fricking prostitution or pure rampaging. After Casper has a very shameful display and yells to another character "THIS IS THE POWER OF EMOTION" while self-imploding in a ball of death affinity mana, I think that cringy power ranger might also be a Path to godhood as well. Anyone can be a god in the Multiverse, in fact there are innumerable gods, including some buffoon named Yip of Yore who pretends to battle and then pretends to lose all to "better build the legendary tale".
Also, the author is a fan of tropes and has the audacity to call it a trope and then doing it regardless, such as making all female characters fall for the protagonist, have the MC attend to friggin' Hogwarts and even giving him an elf slave. There's also an evil "Holy church" like all fantasy books worth their dime should have. Tips in case you ever find yourself in a fantasy setting: stay away from anything resembling a traditional church. They're evil.
I think that the book started way better and on book six Zogarth ran out of creative juice. The strong suit of the novel is not the characters or the world building but the character progression and action, even if sometimes it doesn't make much sense for other characters like the Sword Saint to be at the same level as Jake having not gotten through half the dangerous situations he has. After book two, the stats cease to matter, after book four the equipment cease to matter, and by volume six the only thing that matters is the rarity of the skills. One of the most entertaining things was the skill selection part, but gets skipped or becomes boring at some point, same with the loot he gets out of the enemies and generally The Primal Hunter shifts from classic RPGlit to more combat focused, action movie like story with some slice of life here and there. All the dramatic build-up for C-Grade was for nothing since at race evolution he didn't even got any options, at profession evo. he picked the same one he had before and in class he didn't even got any good options, more on the same line as the previous evo, which was very frustrating. All in all, an entertaining an easy read, not as outstanding as "1# best seller in RPGlit" would indicate, but certainly worth the first five volumes. 6/10
(edit 16/9/24: I was just reading about "altruistic suicide" and remembered that old guy with sword has a backstory about about soldiers walking to their deaths into the cold winter so that Old man could have a shot at getting to see his family again. This all very touchy-touchy, but, really? Two young, healty soldiers decided to willingly renounce to life so that some dude who allegedly had a family could have extra rations?)
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