This drama really wowed me at the beginning - heart stopping kungfu fight scenes, the two leads had good banter and chemistry, the set was gorgeous (obviously big budget) and the story had a good balance of intrigue, romance, action and good and evil characters. I was hooked and truly enjoyed the first 25-30 episodes of it. Then just when you are at the point of addiction, the show peaks, which is just plain cruel. And then in a truly impressive way the show crashes and burns, getting progressively worse as it advances. I kept watching in the desperate hope that it would turn itself around but sadly it did not. It was as if an entirely different production crew took over and set out to purposely destroy the show. The plot meandered down multiple mind numbingly boring and ultimately repetitive political plots to steal the thrones in 3 of the 5 kingdoms only to be foiled by Fuyao and her friends. There were lots of unnecessary side characters and multiple unanswered and non sequitor sub plots. Not to mention the many long winded and boring philosophical discussions that I strongly suggest fast forwarding through unless you have trouble falling asleep at night.

Ethan Ruan and Yang Mi were great together most of the time and especially at the beginning. However, there were long periods where Fuyao/Yang Mi was on her own and the story/actress could not really carry those moments alone, frequently coming across as reckless and annoying. I did not love the supporting cast either and I felt that Vengo Gao's role/storyline was almost as if they were trying out two potential male leads with parallel (repetitive) plots to see which was better. Obviously Yang Mi and Vengo have zero chemistry and that sub plot that went on forever should have been eliminated altogether. I guess the entire crew was being paid by the episode judging from how it ended up being all pasted together to create one big mess of a storyline. Its a shame because this could have been a terrific and memorable (much shorter) drama with some ruthless editing and tighter script/plot writing.

The only thing epic about this drama is the effort I had to put in to see it through the end. Starts with a bang and then death by a thousand cuts of boring inanity. This is one of those shows that definitely would have benefited greatly from the latest Chinese government ban on excessive budgets that lead to too many unnecessary episodes in Chinese costume dramas. To be fair, I would say the first say 30 episodes are actually worth watching. If you can endure some suffering you can even watch a few more episodes until Fuyao discovers Wu Ji's real identity. After that, do yourself a huge favor and drop it. You will just feel angry and cheated if like me, you persist until the bitter end because it then becomes just so, so much more bad than good.