I'm surprised by how well this drama was received. I think it's a solid 7/10. However, I think it's mostly because of the beautiful people in this show that everyone is gushing over this. The story is decent, the acting mediocre to subpar in some instances (except for some of the older cast, honestly loved the Tang three stooges and the Emperor). This also speaks about the lack of good content being released for the past few years. The drama is decent, but is being heralded as a gem and I'm not surprised since there aren't that many good dramas these days with complex plots AND good acting.
This show is mainly being judged with rosy eyes and an overload of hormones. The cartoons in random segments of the show were annoying, especially as they were used to show large scale battle scenes (I'm sure to reduce the cost of production) or very crucial plot development and took me out of immersive experience.
I did like that the FL/ML had a healthy relationship and the character growth of the FL throughout the show was commendable. But I think the director made many bad calls, such as how FL NOT ONCE looked like a male, but we, as an audience, is supposed to believe that she can pull this off? There was even obvious makeup and lipstick on her in her 'male' scenes! This is an insult to the audience as well as the cast members.
Lastly, I just want to say that this is just my opinion, I wanted to like this show more, but every time I came across an idiosyncrasy I felt let down. I think this show could've been much better if it was directed with more sincerity to realism and relied less on the beauty of the actors to gloss over major inconsistencies.