Bao

Can confirm, this grenade is nuts! I got mine from fishing at level 12 or 13. My character is over level 30 now and it still works like magic. Haven't found another one yet, but the one I got does Cryo, and with a cold-stacked Harlow it not only does a bunch of damage but it freezes enemies and makes Badasses nearly a joke.

Something kind of cool in the Shield Hero novel that wasn't touched on in the anime or manga (as far as I remember the manga didn't mention it) is Naofumi's incremental stat growths. See, Naofumi figures out fairly early on that if he dissects a monster, he can offer its individual parts to the Holy Shield and gain new lesser shield forms (like the Usapil meat, leather, and bone shields) that are weaker than standard (Usapil Shield is better than the other 3), but offer small bonuses to defense, strength, agility, etc. Generally these bonuses are a +1, which isn't much, but if you have 100 +1s, then that's a +100. This is actually Naofumi's secret for how he got so strong so fast despite his zero attack power. If there are ever two monsters his party has slain, he and Raphtalia will dissect one to offer it in pieces, then offer the whole one after. Not all monster parts unlock shields, though, and some monsters have no parts that unlock shields. The other secret is that by equipping a shield for a period of time, he unlocks the bonuses on that shield permanently. He has a few main shields for battle, but he often swaps to bonus-locked shields during the day-to-day to unlock them. And then never uses them again, except as energy fodder later on.

I definitely recommend "So I'm a Spider, So What?". Kumoko's grind for the power to survive her new life as one of the weakest monsters is awesome, and the fights are great. She's a combination of a loner introvert and a person going slowly crazy from loneliness. The best aspect of the story, in my opinion (and which the anime failed at), is how interesting the non-Kumoko-focused chapters are. There's quite a lot of worldbuilding that happens in those chapters, plus the things the other reincarnations get up to are actually interesting. And the plot twists that appear are just *chef's kiss*.

So, not exactly reincarnated into a visual novel, but reincarnated into a video game. Her Majesty's Swarm. An avid RTS player awakens one day with no memory of her own name or how she ended up in a cave surrounded by giant bug monsters. Bug monsters who call her their queen and want her to lead them to victory, whatever she defines as such. These are the Arachnea, her favorite playable race in her favorite RTS, and she is now their queen, the central point in their hive mind. And so she goes from trying to give them a better life, to trying to protect a village of elves from the extremely hostile humans, to attempting to conquer the world. But a mysterious angelic being keeps showing up, reminding this nameless queen:"Do not lose your human heart."

Read the novel, not the manga. It's by the same person who wrote Villainess Reloaded: Blowing Away Bad ends with Modern Weapons, 616th Special Information Battalion. The manga is alright, but both it and the light novel were axed, so the manga has a very unsatisfying ending while the novel (the story of which was farther along) just ends on a cliffhanger. But it's still a great story.

SSS-Class Suicide Hunter's leveling system is better imo. Work hard, make waves, and the Tower notices. Your existence becomes more apparent. Your aura strengthens, the number of skills you can have simultaneously also increases. Kim Gong-Ja is a great example of a maggot who envies his betters. So much so that the Tower itself calls him unsightly and gifts him a skill that lets him copy a skill from someone who kills him, but it doesn't resurrect him. That comes later when he's murdered by his idol, who has a skill that, upon death, he revives 24 hours earlier with the memory of what had happened. Gong-Ja copies this ability and revives, and decides this murderous fiend needs to be taken out of the picture. So he stabs himself thousands of times to send himself back in time 11 years and kills that man. Then, with his newfound powers, he decides to climb the Tower in search of the acknowledgment he craves, becoming a rising star and respected hero, saving many lives and changing fate. It's a great read if you aren't triggered by a guy committing suicide a ton.