The drama has a nice premise but the pacing of the story and the way it's developed are not the best. The first few episodes are a bit difficult to sit through, then it gets better and then the story goes downhill once more. To me, the best part of the drama was the romance, which was unfortunately underdeveloped and constantly pushed aside by the mediocre political scheming plot.

The acting of both leads is a bit stiff initially, but they grow more into their characters as the show progresses. The ml is swoon-worthy and although he showed he wanted to be a nice, smart king, he made very rash decisions sometimes, while some other deductions of his seem to come from nowhere. Eun Bo starts off interesting, some type of street smart, feisty woman, but toward the end the writers really dumbed her down and made her character insufferable. She was constantly being chased and kidnapped and never put up a fight, she was basically dead weight.

There's a lot that goes unexplained, like how the king survived a bullet to the head (the scene where he gets shot is very lame so I can't really tell if the bullet went through his brain or not) or how/why he got those profetic dreams, which were just a cheap plot device really. The ending is very meh and rushed and I was also frustrated at how the Kim family, who commited many crimes, including help plotting to dethrone the king, got such light punishments for their crimes.

The supponting cast is ok, Wal is definitely the highlight being a nice comedy-relief. The costumes are beautiful, but then again the ones in all historycal dramas I've watched are. It has some nice scores in the OST, though. Frankly, I only finished the show cause I wanted to see more of the lead couple and it's their sparse but angsty and dramatic scenes that allowed me to look past the flaws of the plot. If you plan to watch this, go with low excpectations and persist through the beginning, then you'll probably be able to finish it.