In another timeline, I would have enjoyed this more. When you've seen a handful of historical time period kdrama, this genre starts to become, for a lack of a better word, "samey." Maybe If I had watched this earlier than other historical kdramas, I would have loved it more; sadly, that's not the case. At a whopping 30 episodes, this was needlessly long. I think I got the point 2 episodes in. "Slavery bad." Good, I got it; let's move on. Another bad and abusive king? No way! You don't say; I would have never expected it! A lowly peasant boy rises up to said bad king? Shocked! Yeah, it's predictable. For me, the romance was the only thing holding my interest, but it too is slow and sparsely spread out.

The visuals leave much to be desired, even for something from 2017. It looks unironically old. That and VIKI's compression is horrendous. The battles are slightly laughable when MC displays his strength. It looks cheap and tacky.

One last point that really irked me was that the initial 5 minutes of the show are HEAVY spoilers. Like, who thought that was a good idea? Ruined the impact when the show got back to those initial scenes 20 episodes later.