To get the good parts out of the way first, I must say that the acting was great, especially when it comes to Kim Soo Hyun and Kim Ji Won, but not only. They all delivered top notch performances.
Besides that, the OSTs were so beautiful, the cinematography was gorgeous, the sets were beautifully built and the costumes were always magnificent, especially when it comes to the female lead.
That being said, I now want to talk about the parts that I consider to be not so great: the plot, the story and the villain.
Storywise, the first half was well done. We got to know the characters, their personalities and their beliefs, we got to know the situation they're in and what they want to achieve and we got to see the villain and his accomplices' work being done slowly but steadily, which created the anticipation that was needed for the midpoint of the series.
Because of the great twist, the 2nd half was promising but it fell short. The characters changed, yes, but those changes weren't enough to overcome the power of the villains. The rich familly got closer and learned how to love each other more, but they remained just as unintelligent as in the first half.
More than that, the second half was way too much abut the villains. It felt that the main leads were playing a secondary role in their show. They started to be so passive and just react at the changes the villain was making.
Plotwise, the series started losing its charm in the second half as well. The amount of scenes that felt repetitive and the back and forth between the main leads only showed the lack of creativity of the writer.
But the thing that annoyed me the most was that some things happened just because. No set-up beforehand, no nothing, they just happened.
Let's take Hae-In as an example here, she had one wish up until episode 13 and she wanted to fulfill her wish no matter what, but when she got the opportunity to satisfy it she immediately turned it down. Her perspective and wish changed in a fraction of a second, and the reason for that was something that was not true to her character for the last 13 episodes. It was a decision that just popped up and set up episode 14 to be the biggest back and forth between the main leads in the entire series.
Finally, the villain. They tried so hard to make a memorable villain, that people would talk about, that they started to lose the identity of the show. They invested so much screen time in his character that the theme of the series started to lose it's spark.
I respect the fact that he had a scope, that drove his actions the entire time, but at the same time I hate that he was built that strong.
He was the type of villain that had everything: money, power, connections, everything. He was invincible. He appeared everywhere at every time. He was just too strong to feel real.
He had his weak point, yes, but it wasn't something so important since he always recovered in a heartbeat when he was hit by others.
This was my point of view and I hope you'd respect it.
I would recommend this series mainly because of it's cast, but no other than that.
