I am a Lil biased about Song Joong ki. No doubt his acting is fabulous, but even though his Italian accent seemed very forced, for obvious reasons, I kind of blindsided it.
OK, coming to the build-up of the drama, the first 4 episodes were frankly not able to capture my attention. If the male lead was somebody else, I would have probably left the drama after the 4th episode. The actual hype comes after the 5th or 6th episode when the real fight begins. The FL's acting seems very very forced, the laughs, the normal dialogue delivery, everything rather seems very forced to me. I understand she has a rather bold role, but she could have delivered it more naturally. It felt as if she was trying very hard, but she just couldn't match up to what the actual role needed.
Next, I feel they revealed the real owner of Babel a little too early, they could have kept us hooked on and on a cliffhanger for a tad bit longer to capture our attention. Ok Taecyeon's acting was just magnificent. He made the psychopath role seem so darn natural. It is a role that can be easily done very poorly, but I think he did a fabulous job.
My favourite part of the show was how by the end all the tenants of Geumga Plaza and Vincenzo and team became one big family. They made the viewers feel as if they were part of the family. Secondly, the episodes after 13 were very interesting. That is when they caught up to the interest of the viewers. They ended on very sensitive points where it would leave us wondering what would happen next.
The ending was absolutely unpredictable, and that was the BEST part about the show. It's been a long since I saw a different ending in a long time. The way they shifted the gold was just BIG BRAIN ENERGY
Overall, the costumes, suspense bg music, and other props addition were very well done. I wouldn't mind re-watching this show solely because of SJK, but for somebody who isn't attached to any of the leads, it's is probably a one time watch. However, I would highly recommend watching it at least once.