I'm not sure I've recovered enough to be fair in a review. This is one of those dramas where you can see the end coming from the start and you know it's going to be devastating and you will cry and scream and rage and pray for things to turn out differently and almost start to believe things will turn out differently. But deep down You know the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train, not the light of day, but you have to keep watching anyway. Never watched the Chinese version. Probably never will. Not a fan of tragedy or saeguks overall and I knew that going in, but MLSHR sucked me in anyway then chewed me up and spit me out the other side. Life sucks, then you die. People suck, sometimes inexplicably. It sucks to be king. It sucks to be someone who loves the king. It sucks to be not-the-king. It sucks to be royalty. It sucks to be not royalty. No one in a saeguk is ever happy. I loved it up until the last two or three episodes where it seemed like everything just unraveled too quickly and without reason. I thought the acting was good, not that I'm a great judge of acting ( I'm good enough to know William Shatner is BAD and that's about it). I enjoyed the soundtrack immensely and thought using modern music for a saeguk was refreshing (but then I liked Romeo + Juliet so what do I know?) I would have been happier with the story if they had used more creative license as opposed to shoehorning the plot into the framework set up by the original. What bothered me most was that 4th prince just seemed to take all his character development and toss it out the window after he became king, as did Hae Soo. She reverted to a damsel in distress that needed saving, he reverted to the wolfdog monster everyone always said he was. If I rewatch, I'll skip the last few eps.