If you have already read the book series, go ahead and treat it as an entertainment.

If you haven’t read the books, then the Tencent series (which I don’t think is very good production-wise especially when compared to Western prestige television, and it drags a lot, but the progression was much better structured since it followed the book structure very closely) does a better job in unravelling both the mystery and the sci-fi plots, despite all its flaws. Also, a new director’s cut version has been released in China (just before the Netflix drop lol) that is apparently better paced but I don’t know when the subtitle translation will be done.

Regarding the Netflix series, I’d describe it as someone who tries to tell a story but is so keen to get to the punchline early, so afraid of losing the audience that they’d forgotten to build up the tension, which is what makes the ultimate payoff worth it.

The cool sci-fi concepts are there but they aren’t built up in the way the books (and the Tencent version) did in a believable manner, so it all comes down to “yeah it works because the show said so” without even trying to convince you in a way that you’d at least think they are feasible or believable.

The mystery part also played out the same: the audience isn’t invited to “play along” with the characters in the VR puzzles, since unlike the books and the Tencent series, the Netflix series doesn’t even throw you a bone of a clue as to how to solve the puzzle. You simply have to take what the characters say for granted.

In other words, it seems to me that the show creators were so keen to get to the plotlines of Books 2 and 3 (which is undeniably far better than Book 1, and are being built up concurrently in the first season) that they did so at the expense of Book 1 plots. I think this is a major mistake, because there are so much wasted potential from Book 1 in the series.

Another thing is that, as strange as it sounds, the scale of operations appeared far smaller when it comes to humanity fighting against an alien invasion that could end with our extinction. Even in the Tencent series that is set (almost) entirely in China, the command centers have representatives of many countries collaborating to discuss how to neutralize the threat. In the Netflix series, it’s all done in a secluded room by two guys in London lol. Like, how am I supposed to believe that the entire humanity’s effort to strategize against an alien invading force is going to be done by a small number of people in London of all places?

And all the main characters from Books 1, 2 and 3 all happen to know each other, and are close friends to begin with? People sometimes criticize that the main book characters are mostly Chinese, but at least they are people who barely crossed each other’s paths throughout the entire narration of the story. They might as well be people who had come from different countries. In the Netflix series, the cast is diverse but they are all close friends who just happen to be the protagonists of the story lol.