A refreshing take on the thriller/mystery genre + amazing visuals of Mt. Jirisan
The show started strong and the location of this show is refreshing, showing other parts of South Korea we viewers don't see often. The mid episodes kind of loss traction as more characters and more plot lines emerged, but I commend the makers of the show by putting everything together on the latter episodes. Highly recommended for anyone who likes mystery/thriller/crime dramas. OST is pretty good also, especially Jin's 'Yours'. The show truly deserves its high ratings, thank you tvN for another remarkable show.Was this review helpful to you?
A misstep, this show gives late 2000s vibes
The visuals of this drama were captivating for a sageuk. I have seen more than a handful of historical kdramas and with all due respect to the creative minds behind this project, I did not like The King’s Affection. Just like a lot of dramas, this started off promising with enrapturing sceneries, acting performances, and plot. Unfortunately, the cracks began to surface during the middle episodes and the show makers were not able to maneuver the storyline and just succumbed to be a bland and generic sageuk. Characters who were once smart and sophisticated became predictable and outright boring and mundane. Starting from episode 15, I was watching it at 1.5x speed, perhaps the series would have been better off if they conduced it to 16 episodes. The ending was disastrous, like really, didn’t the allegedly “smart” characters somehow foresaw that the antagonist had an actual army that he could use to fulfill his evil plans. Cant believe also that they used only 2 songs throughout the series, officially there might be more, but the same song was just playing over and over again from the first to the last episode. The acting of the leads were just good, the acting of the supporting characters were able to show more emotions than the leads though. Overall, I would not recommend this, there are a lot more better period kdramas than this. Only watch it if you are an avid fan of the leads.Was this review helpful to you?
A little disappointing - nothing new about this kdrama
This drama is disappointing. Before watching this drama, I read first the comments about it and they were mostly positive. However, upon watching the first 11 episodes, I honestly think those comments were overly exaggerated. This drama seems to have been made in the late 2000s, there is nothing new about the plot and more than half of the characters are annoying and predictable. Da-Li's character is so naive and out of touch with reality, I can't believe women are still portrayed like this in 2021. I suggest to only watch it if you're a fan of the lead actors, but if not, there are many more better kdramas to watch :)Was this review helpful to you?