Aramintai

The story's good. FL's character is very cool here.
But it's not a romance focused drama, just to be clear. It's present, but the drama is mainly about investigations and revenge.

Yea, not only is her character concept ridiculous, especially the fugly mask, FL's delivery is absolutely cringe. No way she could have been a general commanding armies with that demeanor, unless she got some serious personality disorder after falling into the river to excuse this cutesy, girly, childish prancing around. Only blind deaf old farts won't realize it's a woman at first sight. Aegyo, kawaii genki, whatever they call this acting in China - it looks completely out of place here. And isn't this type of acting got out of vogue ages ago?

I think they wanted to make this something akin to reincarnation story first, where a character goes back to the past to start over again with all skills and knowledge retained, but I heard these stories got banned in China so as not to promote suicides or whatever. Still, that doesn't excuse this cringefest.

And let's be glad that she did realize that in the end. If ML wasn't there for her, I think she actually would have died for her revenge. It's not in your face, but they came a long way together through that year and he gently influenced her a lot. But it's understandable that it was hard for her to let go and took some time to reflect, she's been living hellbent on revenge for most of her life.

Well, again, this drama's is mostly about investigations and revenge. Romance does play an important part in the main plot and greatly affected FL's character in the end, but it's not the main focus. And the leads had just one big spat here, it was logical and was bound to happen.

Here it's not like it often happens in rom-coms where's there's an obligatory break-up because of the dumbest of reasons for the sake inserting this trope.

It's hard to explain without spoilers, but their behavior was all in-character, even the argument, it was bound to happen at some point. And in any case, they made up in the end.

It was all rather fast paced. The last big case started in episode 30 involving the emperor himself, and the focus was mostly on it, the leads didn't have much time to continue sulking around after that. And FL, after cooling down and realizing she was in the wrong, was quietly working behind the scenes to nail the villain in a clever way through subterfuge, but didn't want to get any of her friends hurt, so didn't let them in on her plan. They even started suspecting her turning evil at some point, lol.

She was reductuve in seeking justice, and she didn't really care about protecting herself if she got it. ML even had to tell her to stop ruining her own health to solve cases and trust her friends and colleagues, instead of doing everything alone. But she still did send them away that time, because she knew they'd disapprove of her methods and may get hurt themselves. Besides getting revenge, she really didn't want anybody else she cared about to get hurt because of her.

The villain will start to get increasingly more active after that first assassination attempt.
And I strongly disagree about your opinion about the romance, it's quite believable here, maybe you weren't paying attention to their small scenes throughout the episodes that started pretty early.

She knew that the villain was one of the ranking high officials, but when she went to the emperor to ask him about it he grounded her to her family's mansion. And even after ML saved her from being poisoned to death he still refused to help her. So it was just the final straw for her, she realized the emperor is covering whomever it was. Increasingly frustrated and without any other leads she had no choice but invent something drastic to lure out the villain. So she used the wedding as an opportunity to stage that poisoned banquet. It wasn't dumb, just reckless and ruthless, which is not out of character for her.
Was there perhaps another way to find out who it was? Perhaps not in time before he finally succeeded in assassinating her.
The only dumb thing here is the villain not assassinating FL back when she was a kid. She grew up absolutely hellbent on revenge.

If you watched until the end and seen the post credits scene - better to have the devil you know.

Yea, FL does something that leads to a big argument. She then cools down and reflects about it for a couple of episodes, while poor ML suffers and waits for her to come around.

2. Episode 28.
3. Episode 29. Up to episode 34.
3. No.
4. Yes. But after the credits there's a teaser for possible season 2 with a new villain who means to do harm to the leads.
5. There is romance here and it's important to the main plot, but it's not the main focus of the drama.
6. Depends on what you mean by that. But there's a few of these scenes here.

Give me the title, I'll check it out.

Sure, why not, it can have romance. Just no dumb soap, please. Genres can be whatever, just no stupid costumed high fantasy. Wuxia is fine.
Endings mainly have to make sense, but I dislike cop out open endings.

Decided to give it a try, but can't help but laugh out loud at the cringe premise - the lameass mask, the clearly not a man's body, or gait, or face, or voice, or strength, or demeanor...

What is this? Some sort of "I got kicked from the party and I reincarnated into Mulan", lmao? She wasn't even isekai-ed or reborn, but was spouting that tropey "this time I'm gonna do it right!" like a sad hikki hero starting a new life. She even suddenly changed her personality from a sulky shadowy general into a perky girly (but trying to pose as man) fresh recruit with (of course) max level skills. This is so cliche, I can't even...😂

Can you, guys, give me recommendations for good cdramas like this one? I rarely watch cdramas, so dunno what's been good lately. The preferred criteria:
-something not very old;
-no xianxia bs with fairies and immortals; something grounded, wuxia elements are fine;
-no reincarnation or transmigration into books/other worlds/the past (I'm fkn bored to tears with isekai genre);
-good acting and high quality sets & costumes;
-little to no dumbassery or cringe in the plot, has to be something mature like in this drama;
-not a soap opera with outlandish tearjerker plots just for the sake of it.

Not good? Why low rating?

There's more weight to lose on her? Jeez, these anorexic beauty standarts really do a number on people's perception what is actually healthy.

The right chancellor was corrupt, he was embezzling money from army funds and treasury. FL's father got wind of his schemes and so the chancellor plotted to kill him.

There is romance here, and it's not even slight, more like medium sized and plays an important part in the main plot. I dunno why the mods aren't updating the correct tags.