As a lover of gritty saguk dramas, this fully lived up to my expectations and even exceeded them. This drama was a very intelligent blend of real historical events/characters and fictional ones. The real life characters bring the reality to the drama and the fictional ones breath life and excitement into it.

The acting in this drama is on another level, it's brilliant. The actors I enjoyed in particular were Yoo Ah In who played every aspect of Bang won's adult life superbly and Park Hyuk Kwon who played two separate characters but pulled off both of their distinct personalities.

The ost for this drama is breath-taking, the songs match the melancholy atmosphere of the entire drama and lift the already dramatic or emotional scenes to new heights.

One thing that needs to be mentioned is the sword fight scenes, out of all of the k drama's I've seen, this one has by far the best choreographed sword fights! Really, the only downside of this drama is that it can be quite confusing at times, mainly because of the overwhelming number of characters. Nevertheless, it's worth getting invested in. Since it's a 50 episode drama there's so much more I could say but really you should just give it a watch and see if it is your thing! I will say though, don't expect a light, happy, romantic drama because it's very far from that...