My personal feeling is that MC and some of the major characters need a proper goal and motive to grow and endure rather than to 'just get stronger'. We have Ruo who is barely touched upon and us as the readers are mostly kept in the dark about him. I really loved the side story of kid Ruo with his aunt, everyone around him despising him but still putting on a good face cuz of Yichen, Ruo having his internal struggle with the dragon souls constantly cursing him, him being hammered with the context that strength is everything and only those with strength deserve anything at all. Idk why Niki decided to forgo with this, it just adds more to the characters rather than them being the single faced arrogant assholes we see in the main story. Its not necessarily lore but these are character defining events that we normally dont get access to as the MC. Only way to read them is via side stories.
See, MC had a perfectly good motive/s right from the beginning of the story, Aunty's death. The one person who actually loved MC unconditionally died cuz of the He Clan. Ofc Niki can give different flavours of why MC will enact vengeance, or have the option to have no motive at all other than getting strong for those extra evil MC's. It just feels so bland as the story goes on and the MC is swept up by the wind and wherever it takes them. MC just feels like a soulless husk who has no feelings and desires. All the best IF's and even stories have an MC with a predetermined or developed goal in mind. And here is Poma MC with none.
This is the primary, foremost problem with POMA, there's 0 actual reactivity or changes to the world or any development of character whatsoever, Ruo's loss to the heir of the worst and most decadent family, presuming you win, does nothing to actually change his character or reputation or anything of the sort, not even the rep of his clan, Yichen doesn't react and neither do any of his relatives or the people around him, in a better written story, this would be something that has intense ripples in the world of the story, instead, literally nothing happens, You basically get Coldsteel The Hedgehog'd later when the story all but spells out "Heeeh, That wasn't a fraction of 1% of Ruo's power, nothing personnel, kid.", your rivalry basically never even gets expanded on whatsoever and it's not touched upon and you never fight her after Early Houtian, and this only continues happening and happening with the sheer
heart attack, constant power creep increased with the introduction of each new character, not to mention that with that, your growth, regardless of your MC's stats is rendered utterly null.
And to expand on that growth point, the majority of characters do not meaningfully grows at all during the story in terms of character, Ruo is literally the default pre-provided-by-microsoft excel anime rival, with literally no meaningful character traits besides le hard childhood backstory and
sword, that's literally the extent of their character, Mei Mei is actually somewhat interesting of a character concept which is why the mass majority of RO content is literally just Mei Mei, but it's literally impossible to access if you want to play a good MC, her goals are never advanced in the current story, the rest are all so ****ing uninteresting and all the new cultivator characters are the extremely ****ing boring Fantasy High Society "I'm superior to you" types, that's it for characterization in this game, there's nothing else but Ai which actually does have some character growth but all that's showcased with is at the very start of you waking up from a coma, that's all.
And in terms of player interactivity, there's literally none but which flavor of use to fight your opponent with, which literally doesn't matter in the long run since the majority of those options barely even change the outcome of the fight, you're promised that you're a vital piece of the coming war between the Tangs and the Rogues but all it is is just a promise, there's no change you make within the outcome of the war that actually matters in the end, Nearly all of the events are predecided with what is usually the single worst option that you'd want to make, and if they aren't, The options
ALL.COME.DOWN.TO.THE.SAME
****ING.OUTCOME, Nothing happens if you invest in Jing Guo, Nothing happens if you ally with Mei Mei and attempt to kill Long Chen, he survives and just leaves, Nothing happens if you teach one of the spear twins the ultimate spear technique, Nothing happens if you ***** out Ruo, nothing happens if you crush the FFA, Nothing happens if you **** up the spear twins and Muchen, nothing at all ****ing happens in terms of interaction in this supposed interactive fiction.
The more I read and read it the more I'm convinced it should just be a generic xianxia with Ruo as the protagonist, that's how it seems 90% of the time anyways, you don't do any important **** to be considered a protagonist in the story.
