Firstly, I have to point out I'm not a big fan of revenge plots and rarely fall in love with them like I did with Itaewon Class which has a more refreshing and modern take on the usual one man VS corporation storyline.

I liked that this time, It wasn't a story of a tragedy but rather a fantastically optimistic telling of a person who got back at those who wronged him by not abandoning himself, his values or his precious people. Our main lead Sae Ro Yi got knocked down hard, at an early age, having lost his father, his dream of becoming a policeman and his freedom. Now following the footsteps of his greatest nemesis, he chooses a new dream, opens a restaurant and with the help of friends he met along the way they work together towards becoming the leading company in the food industry and thus taking his revenge on the current number one's leader.

------storyline gets a 10 from me
***Moving on to the characters/acting:***
1.Park Sae Ro Yi (SRY from now): SRY doesn't get much of a character development throughout the show nor does he necessarily have to. He is pure, inspiring, ambitious, never strays from his believes and protects his people no matter what. The consistency in his character is what makes him a such a great one and what draws people to him. Park Seo Joon never disappoints.
2. Oh Soo Ah (SA from this point): has to be the comment section's favorite character.SA is an orphan who relies only on herself and her ability, never asking or taking help from others, and always thinking and acting according to her best interests. She ends up receiving a scholarship from Jang Ga, the leading corporation in Korea's food industry which is also lead by our main villain and later gets accepted to work there. She is also SRY's first love. All and all she is a very well-written realistic character and the only flaw I find in her is her behavior towards our main lead. Despite also liking him she is always passive, never encourages him and acts as the devil's messenger in times not even by necessity, making me wonder does she really like him at all.
3. Jo Yi Seo: My personal favorite (sadly it seems I'm a minority): YS has some sociopathic tendencies, although never officially diagnosed, is a social media influencer with a large following, an extremely capable person and a genius who looks pretty like an angel but in truth is somewhat of a devil (loosely quoted). She meets our hero, falls in love with him and decides to do everything in her power to help him achieve both his dream and his revenge consequently becoming the new manager of his restaurant.
What I find so refreshing and endearing in her is how she, a 20 year old at the beginning of the show, never doubts her capabilities, bases her dream around a man but never feels apologetic for it or lets it diminish her value as a person. She strives to make him happy and to make him fall in love with her trough her actions as her financial and mental independence allow her to follow through with her decisions. YS's and SA's characters demonstrate that there are many ways to be a strong female, particularly YS who is both a strong female and is hopelessly in love with a man (because somehow dramas have them girls suddenly become all week and dependent on the man, and also a bit of change from the male lead who is always pulling strings for the girl is always a blessing). Now, some of YS's behavior is bit controversial and not to everyone's liking, I say you have to judge for yourselves how you deem her behavior to be as I find there's a big double standard in many of the comments on her.
4. villains: for the villains we have the CEO Jang Dae Hee (JDE) and his son Jang Geun Won (JDW). Honestly both actors did a good job, I pitted JDW and could never completely hate him even when he lost all hope of redemption as he was but a mere result of his father's values: the strong pray on the week and regular people outside of Jang Ga's ranks are livestock (there's a pig and chicken metaphor here but I won't get into it). But the true villain star is You Jae Myung who instead of hate got all my admiration for his acting skills and I secretly wanted to bow to him in admiration of his versatility. He did an amazing job playing a cold, collected, prideful and arrogant CEO who believes he's above everyone else. Also, apparently no makeup makes a scarier villain and those freckles should be added as a skill in his resume for playing bad guys. Overall, the "evil" characters weren't over the top and you could understand their reasoning. the only downside goes to JDW character development toward the end, frankly he lacked true conviction for his extreme actions and was kind of meh when he could have been a big source of feels and sobs from the viewers.
The side characters were awesome apart from Jang Geun Soo (the CEO's second son) who wasn't developed properly, and you got to give kudos for the diverse representation of people on the show.
----- charecters and acting get an 8.
***OST***: I have no complains-------it's a 10,I keep listening to it over and over. It fitted perfectly with everything that was going on in the drama and gave me a lot of feels.
***Rewatch value***: 7 because revenge still isn't my pick to relive boredom and yet Iteawon Class was simply too good.
***To sum it all up***, Itaewon Class had The Best Most Satisfying end for a drama I can remember in my almost 11 years of watching almost exclusively Kdramas and had me holding my breath for episodes come Friday and even during the entire week's wait. I don't like to criticize things especially if I enjoyed them so much, so even though it had some problems and sparked a lot of debate, I give it an overall 9 - to be objective , though i hardly am (in my heart it's still a 10).