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This review may contain spoilers
Should have been shorter
The first half of the series was pretty good. It's one of the rare ones where the female lead is actually truly able to hold her own. The beginning is action-filled with the assassination theme before it teeters heavily into war scenes and palace politics. But here's what trailed off for me:
-- The female lead was a tough character initially but she softens heavily once she acquires a family and a lover. Although you still see some of her initial traits throughout, she does change quite significantly.
-- The chemistry was there between the ML/FL initially but after they FINALLY get together, there was too many lovey scenes of them having repetitive small couple talk. I skipped through a lot of this.
-- Although there were plenty of traitors as with the typical palace politics, it was nice to see some steady loyalties between the characters and particularly with the unloved Empress. But they really just offed too many people and the antagonists got off way too easy.
-- The plot was initially also pretty intriguing but it gets more and more muddled. The insertion of the couple's happy times also weren't really placed very well especially after so many deaths. There was also some random inserts of characters that felt really off like the youngest son's love interest. It's as if she was a filler for the sake of balancing out the tragedies.
-- And man, over 50 episodes were way too long for the point the story was trying to make. After uncovering too many layers of masterminds, it started to get numbing.
-- The poisoning aspect was also really over-repetitive.
-- The last episode was completely unnecessary and should have been left out.
Overall, it's one of those series where you feel compelled to finish because there are enough interesting characters involved and you've become invested. I did choose to make the effort to speed through the latter half for completion.
-- The female lead was a tough character initially but she softens heavily once she acquires a family and a lover. Although you still see some of her initial traits throughout, she does change quite significantly.
-- The chemistry was there between the ML/FL initially but after they FINALLY get together, there was too many lovey scenes of them having repetitive small couple talk. I skipped through a lot of this.
-- Although there were plenty of traitors as with the typical palace politics, it was nice to see some steady loyalties between the characters and particularly with the unloved Empress. But they really just offed too many people and the antagonists got off way too easy.
-- The plot was initially also pretty intriguing but it gets more and more muddled. The insertion of the couple's happy times also weren't really placed very well especially after so many deaths. There was also some random inserts of characters that felt really off like the youngest son's love interest. It's as if she was a filler for the sake of balancing out the tragedies.
-- And man, over 50 episodes were way too long for the point the story was trying to make. After uncovering too many layers of masterminds, it started to get numbing.
-- The poisoning aspect was also really over-repetitive.
-- The last episode was completely unnecessary and should have been left out.
Overall, it's one of those series where you feel compelled to finish because there are enough interesting characters involved and you've become invested. I did choose to make the effort to speed through the latter half for completion.
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