The drama had a lot of positives: good acting, compelling plot, romantic chemistry, and a complete lack of cliche tropes which I really appreciated. But, convoluted plotlines really brought the quality down.

ML went through a very intense character development starting as a clumsy and goofy mountain man and graduating to a giga-Chad "God of War". Na Im Woo playing Dal really helped in developing the character. He is probably the biggest man I've ever seen in Asian drama, so it was completely fitting for him to play an unbreakable warrior. Writers did a great job at flushing out Dal's motivations for fighting. Being a pacifist, he stayed away from conflict. But falling in love gave him something to protect. Him calling Ga Jin his "country" was very meaningful and it showed that she was the center of his universe and everything he did he did for her.

While the drama had really good characterization and good romantic chemistry, the plot gradually became very convoluted with more plotlines than it could handle. The story started out as a political drama where ML helped FL fight political corruption and an uprising against her family. This should've been the only plot line because there was plenty of story to work with. Unfortunately, the plot got entangled with additional characters and storylines involving outside forces that had nothing to do with the main plot, the assassin's sect and another country, none of which had anything in common with the main story. The writers tried to tie it all together, but it wasn't really convincing. The assassin's motivation for revenge was the murder of his family. But the writers didn't develop the character enough for us to care. There was one flashback of his family dying and that's it. Other than that, he was just a plot device for the main characters to act and drive the main plot forward without getting any meaningful development of his own.

The writers also seemed to be confused about Dal's character direction. His personality went full circle back to pacifism because the writers unnecessarily created too much conflict that involved unnecessary fighting. Fighting was his own decision to protect the woman he loved, which was enough to resolve his internal conflict between staying peaceful and fighting for love. Some reviews here put the blame on the princess who fixated too much on the country's problems and disregarded Dal's feelings. I cannot agree with that. Ga Jin was the princess who had the weight of the world on her shoulders and a warrior trying to protect the country and her royal family against assassination attempts and a political revolt. She did not have the luxury to worry about feelings, even when it came to Dal. Dal just worried about Ga Jin and followed her. Creating an additional arc about his feelings and just have him leave went completely against everything he worked for. Ga Jin was his entire world. He lived for her. The way he was originally written, he would've never left her.

And then the ending... **SPOILERS**

Honestly, it would've been better if Dal died in battle. Even his "death" scene was underwhelming - getting randomly ambushed after the war ended and pretending to die by getting into suspended animation so he could disappear from civilization. What were the writers thinking? Why couldn't Dal and Ga Jin just retire from war and live a peaceful life. All of these unnecessary and far fetched story lines really cheapened the plot and made me not care about the characters. If the writers stuck to the original plot involving political intrigue, the show would've been so much more interesting. Moreover, the last few episodes introduced a completely new storyline which did not even fit into the original plot. I didn't want to drop the drama because I was so close to the end, but I couldn't wait for it to end.

Overall, I really loved the drama even with all of the unnecessary plotlines, but the ending just completely disappointed me.