Before picking this up I saw many reviewers mention how they preferred this over Goblin, but unfortunately that comparison does not make any sense. At first I thought that it could be the nostalgia, but GFB is not that old. This drama came out in 2013, 3 years after Secret Garden.. Maybe it could be popular because of Seunggi's fangirls?

I like Suzy, she seems to be always typecast to act as the same character she is portraying here. At the time of filming this, she's been 19 years old and to me her acting seemed pretty amateurish compared to her later works, but she is still probably the best thing about this drama. She was pretty cute & had some funny moments. I never liked Seunggi and I especially did not like his character here, nor did he have great chemistry with Suzy. (that could be hugely different in Vagaband, I don't know, yet)
Despite all their issues I guess they had their moments, their romance is the reason why I managed to somehow suffer through these 24 episodes. That's right this is one of the longest kdramas ever.

The main problem here is the absolutely terrible writing. In a cheesy a romcom the terrible writing is excusable, but I have the impression, that this was meant to be some sort of epic Sageuk saga and considering how much effort/cost was spent on the sets & the costumes, calling this an ambitious production should be fair, right?! Frankly the romcom parts are just too infrequent and flawed to carry the rest of the drama along. So yeah the terrible writing, it's just difficult to put into words how many problems the writing has and it's not even just the ubiquitous eyeroll inducing scenes. The pacing is off, it takes far to long for the actual plot to start rolling, considering that the first 2 episodes were the best part of the story, while only being a sort of a prequel is saying something. It's often praiseworthy when writers deviate from the typical kdrama plot progression. (kiss in ep6-8>>happiness till ep13-14>> conflict >>finale) However what we had here is far worse, it took absolutely forever for the romance to get anywhere, but forget happiness, they never even had a shred of hope really.
So much time is spent on the gisaeng house and yes initially I thought those gisaeng related happenings were rather interesting, but ultimately what did those women amount to in this show? It feels like a plot device that was nicely set up, but never used in a meaningful way. Let's not even get me started on Yubi's character, sister crazyeyes. All the scheming & war related subplots were really poorly executed. The fighting scenes are badly choreographed, but that hardly put a dent in my impression of this drama. (hypnosis, illusions, ninjas)

I don't like it, when the main force driving the plot is the main characters wanting to lose their cool magical powers. I also strongly dislike it, when the mundane wins over the magical in general. I really shouldn't have started this..

I could go on and on about the aimless writing, one big thing I noticed is that one moment the drama takes itself very seriously and in another it devolves into some sort of slapstick comedy show. Comedic relief is fine after some tearjerking melo, but this just doesn't work here all that well..

TLDR: Don't bother watching this, it's a mess.

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Watch Goblin if you haven't watched it yet.
If you want a cheesy historical drama that's actually good, I can recommend Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms, Eternal Love instead. That cdrama is nearly as cheesy as this one, but EVERYTHING about it is hugely better.