I grew up watching the old TVB series staring the Hong Kong actors like Felix Wong, Tony Leung, Andy Lau, and Miu Kiu Wai and Kent Tong. They were the golden ages of drama series but strangely, the Sword Stained with Royal Blood 1984 didn't really stick in my mind despite having a great cast. Felix Wong starred as Yuan Cheng Zhi and Lawrence Ng starred as General Li Yan in that one. So I came into this remake with 0 expectations. I haven't read the Jin Yong novel so can't tell you how truthful to the novel this series is. But based on watching previous adaptations, it seemed to miss some parts at the start. At 30 episodes long, the series is light on (compared to other Chinese drama marathons that stretch over 60 episodes) and flows well. It's easy to watch from beginning to end. Bobby Dou looks like a rough and rugged version of Yuan Cheng Zhi. Not the noble and scholar type. Actually looks a bit uneducated and slow in the initial costume and wig design... They fixed this costume up t the end. Bobby has a manly and heroic feel about him. My gripe with a lot of the Jin Yong remakes is how they cast weak (sissy) looking males into lead roles. So it was refreshing to see an actor like Bobby. I really liked Eva Huang as Qing Qing. There was a playfulness and cheeky way in which she played her role. She was my favorite actress in the series and my favorite Qing Qing to date. Sun Fei Fei plays a more independent and stronger version of A'Jiu (the Princess). She was not weak or hateful like how I've seen how this character has been portrayed in the past. General Li Yan hardly appears in the series unlike the 1984 version, To a large degree the supporting cast was excellent. A shout out to Vincent Jiao who performed well as the Golden Snake Warrior. The costumes were pretty good and went back to the old wuxia style look, not the cartoon look I have seen in some dramas. The fighting sequences were old school wuxia and didn't go overboard with special effects. The music was okay without being great. I really loved the 80's songs that went with the wuixa series. Something I didn't like was the dialogue between some characters, especially between Yuan Cheng Zhi and A'Jiu. The dialogue was clumsy and awkward at times. The conversation starts pretty much with 'Miss A'Jiu' and then the rest of the sentence. I mean for Christ sake we know who she is without her name being mentioned 10 times in the same conversation... Overall I give this series a 6.5/10. It was good but not great. It is worth watching if you're a Jin Yong and/or traditional wuxia fan.