I go into each drama I watch without any expectations and that makes for shows like this to be a wise decision because then I'm not surprised or disappointed when things go south. In this case the people I watched for were Reba and LYN both of whom did good jobs in their roles as well as some of the side characters which I'll list below. But the storyline was just a mess in a dress; this series is best watched for entertainment purposes only and to suspend all logic possible. Because it's literally 80K Di Troops + 30K Naval Forces + "You're the Crown Prince" on constant repeat.

Pros: The revenge plot made the most sense and they should have just stuck with that. As mentioned up top FL and SML were convincing in their characters and as were a few of the side characters like LL, An Ning, and WS. But even with them, this wasn't their strongest drama. I really feel the script failed everyone. Both the empress dowager and the emperor were the best villains given their circumstances with this script. Costumes, sets, OSTs were beautiful. CGI was ok, could have been better.

Cons: The script was just ridiculous, you had the FL for about a dozen episodes act like fake gorilla glue towards ML. People surviving things they could only do in Xianxias; like being pierced with a ton of arrows and sail off a cliff. Cliff diving seemed to be a favorite sport of a lot of the characters because 3 did it after being mortally wounded and survived, ML did it twice. The show dragged a lot for only being 39 episodes and many scenes were very anticlimactic. You were just watching going "that's it?"

This was the first time I had ever seen GJ act in anything and I have to say that HY seemed to have facial paralysis. He said his lines but there was no emotion even when it came to sarcasm or announcing something. I don't know if that's how he always acts or they edited him that way because BTS and interviews, it was like a totally different person. I understand playing aloof characters but you need to be able to emote with your eyes at least and I didn't see any of that. It came off as largely robotic to me. Hopefully it's just because of this drama as even those that I listed in the pros, their characters weren't the strongest they've played or were edited weirdly and if I see him in the future, it'll be different and better. There are extra little clips on Youku of the ML and FL's life together that wasn't shown in the show that seems like a different drama. Their interactions there are way better than in the show. They could have put those clips into the last episode instead of keeping the ML on the mountain for 1.5 episodes refusing to go down without any rhyme or real reason.

MB or LB whatever his name was who also played an antagonist was so much of an afterthought that the character went from loyal to who he really was plus they made him randomly weirdly stalkerish when he revealed his "real self" just made no sense. It felt like that whole war plot was created just to kill off AN and send ML off the cliff going blind. What was the purpose of fake DZY and all of her bathing scenes? To make us roll our eyes more? The revenge plot and war/aftermath plots seemed like they belonged to different shows. And how did DZY's hair turn black again? I can't even count the amount of plot holes; I know I forgot most of them. I'll just say, it had a lot of potential considering what novel readers said, but came up ridiculously short.

Would I recommend it? I'll divide this one; if you're looking at this from a good storyline perspective, then no. But if you're just wanting to be entertained and not think, then sure go for it. Anyways, the choice is yours.