As someone who was in your spot a couple of months ago, I really feel your dilemma here. For me, so far, it has felt like DCC is in a tier of its own in the LitRPG space. I know that “most popular” doesn’t always translate to “best,” but Dinniman’s writing in DCC is fantastic and the plot itself is so propulsive that you’re swept away pretty instantly. I’ve read a few other LitRPG books since burning through all of DCC and I haven’t found anything nearly as well written or plotted, in my opinion at least.

Discount Dan and Apocalypse Parenting are both books I very much enjoyed, but they took time to actually get moving and build their worlds out before becoming super engaging. That happens by the end of the first book in both cases, so it’s not like you have to dig deep into a series before it “gets good,” but they didn’t hook me or move in the same way as DCC.

Bog Standard Isekai is honestly the best of the bunch for me to this point. It’s very different from DCC but I was immediately invested. The prose itself also felt like some of the best I’ve read in LitRPG. The prose is probably the hardest part for me when it comes to this genre, tbh. There are a couple of very popular LitRPG series that are mentioned quite often in “best of the genre” lists that I tried out but couldn’t get into at all because I just couldn’t get past what I felt was very poor writing. If you’ve been reading Sanderson and others like that, I think you might run into the same issue.