Extremely Terrible Story Line

I normally don't write reviews. But this drama is so astoundingly, record-breakingly bad that I had to break my own record and write a review for once. I'm usually pretty generous with my ratings, I don't normally score anything under 7. So giving this a 3 means that I literally cannot stand this drama.

To be clear, I found this drama to be bad from the start. But I pushed through because people kept saying it gets better (also because I can never find myself dropping a drama no matter how bad it is). Unfortunately, it never really gets better. I did find the drama a bit more bearable around episode 26 / 27 and thought I was going to finally be okay with the drama. But then I continued watching and it just turned out to be even worse.

Acting - Okay to start off, I don't really have major problems with the acting. It's not spectacular, but it's decent, watchable. As a fan of Zhao Li Ying though, I have to say her acting in this one is not on par with her own standard. There were some parts when you could tell that she wasn't really mentally there because she was just staring off into space. Just by looking at her eyes, you can tell she has spaced out. And that she's tired. She looks really tired and slightly aged in this drama. Maybe she made her comeback too early, I don't know.

Characters - Oh my God. There were just way too many dumb characters. Apart from Zhou Fei and Xie Yun (and maybe head of Disha Shen Tian Shu) all the other characters are pretty dumb. Li Yan gets the award for stupidest character in this drama. She's just so annoying. She cannot fight, doesn't have any common sense, is extremely naive, always gets into trouble and yet she always insists on tagging along. I'm just done with her. All the other characters feel a bit bland too. I think Li Sheng is the only character who had some sort of character development. He changed, still cannot fight really well and does occasionally dumb stuff but he became a bit more logical and mature I guess. But the other characters? No good character development.

A lot of the side characters like Third Prince and that young master from I forgot what mini sect serve no purpose other than being dumb and creating trouble for Zhou Fei and Xie Yun again and again and again and again. Some characters like the generals are honestly pretty useless too. I feel like they supposedly played some important role in the war or something but I always just forget who they're supposed to be. Zhou Fei's parents are also MIA for most of the drama, so again they don't really contribute much.

Story - This is what I have the biggest problem with. Right from the very start, there were way too many supporting characters with their own stories. There were way too many sub-plots that you can't even make out what the main story line is supposed to be. As the story progresses, they (slowly) start to focus less on the sub-plots but by then, you're so confused you still don't know what the story is. And then you get to the middle and you realize that maybe the story line is about this highly coveted treasure / artifact / god-knows-what called Hai Tian Yi Se. So what exactly is Hai Tian Yi Se? You will only find out in the second last episode because guess what? None of the characters know what Hai Tian Yi Se is either!! Yay, so nice. Is this supposed to make viewers more curious and drawn to find out more? Because it only made me frustrated. Also, I don't know if I missed it or what but they never really explain in detail about the tokens of Hai Tian Yi Se is either. It's like just some casual comments here and there about the lock, about the sheath etc. So here I am, having finished the drama and I still don't quite know what the full 5 tokens are :/ I don't think I've ever been so lost while watching a drama. I'm usually the one thinking "have you guys not been paying attention?!" when I see people commenting asking when something happened or asking to confirm something that has already been confirmed in the drama. But with this drama, I'm the one going "wait what is going on? did they already explain this cause i'm lost and i don't know what is happening". They also casually miss out some stuff like whatever the hell happened to Chu Chu's brother? They just casually forgot about him.
Here are also some of the other stupid stuff that they did throughout the drama + about the drama:

- too many flashbacks that make no sense
- having really really long flashbacks in the middle of the battle???
- talking in the middle of the battle
- escaping but then stopping halfway to start chatting and joking around
- Zhou Fei constantly breaking her blades (this never happens in other wuxia dramas but she breaks her blades like nobody's business)
- Zhou Fei and Xie Yun acting cheeky and lovey dovey when there's dead bodies around them (no, the dead bodies aren't even of the villains. THOSE ARE DEAD BODIES OF PEOPLE ON THEIR SIDE)
- catching up to the villain but not killing them immediately, letting the villain escape so they can wreck more havoc in the future
- DOING ALL THE WORK FOR THE BAD GUYS AND LETTING THEM WALK AWAY WITHOUT A FIGHT WHAT THE HELL

As a viewer, struggling to even make out what the main storyline is, IS THE WORST THING EVER! That is a sign of extremely bad storytelling. Need I say more? (No.)

Music - Personally, I don't hate the OSTs. I might even have liked it if not for the fact that I am so repulsed by this drama that I can't even bring myself to like the OSTs.

Production quality - Yeah the editing is pretty bad. Some of it doesn't even make any sense, like they just cut off the scene without any elaboration or explanation or follow up scene. Also there were some parts when they blurred out the face of the body double?? WHAT EVEN

In conclusion, it's a terrible drama. If eye candy is enough to satisfy you, or if you're just here for the romance, sure go ahead then. But if you don't care for the above two, don't bother watching.

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