Sword and Beloved (2025)

Not Much Sword, Secondary Stories Add Romance, & a Tired Cheng Yi in a Fantasy That Drags

It starts as a promising light fantasy drama with themes of transcending fate and choosing one’s own path, but it becomes nonsensical and dragged, making it hard to stay engaged. I actually had to force myself to finish the final episodes.

Main Story & Acting

The main romance between Cheng Yi and Li Yitong is disappointingly flat. They share zero romantic spark or emotional connection, not even a believable friendship, more like polite strangers. While the script itself keeps them distant, their chemistry never develops.

Cheng Yi, in particular, feels detached and tired, lacking the emotional intensity and focus he once displayed in Love and Redemption. His performance here feels stoic, repetitive, and emotionally absent, as though he’s acting but not fully present in the role. It’s hard not to wonder if something might be affecting him personally, given his recent performances have also felt less invested.

Supporting Stories

Thankfully, the two secondary romantic storylines provide some relief. These side couples bring energy, humor, and genuine chemistry, even delivering the only kisses in the entire drama. Their playful interactions and lighter tone make them far more engaging than the main leads, and at times, their stories completely overshadow the central "romance".

Action & Production

The sword fights are heavily CGI-enhanced, with lots of wirework, glowing swords, and energy effects. Instead of showcasing real martial arts skill, the combat scenes feel more like digital spectacles, flashy but emotionally empty. The result is a sense of AI-style choreography that looks artificial rather than exciting.

While this style may fit a fantasy setting, it sacrifices the raw authenticity of traditional wuxia fights, which I personally miss.

Themes

The drama aims to explore ideas of fate, destiny, and following one’s heart, but it never achieves the emotional or philosophical depth it strives for.

Final Thoughts

If you have nothing else to watch, it’s passable, otherwise, it doesn’t offer anything particularly new or memorable.

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FSMM DISASTER WITH ROTTEN SCRIPT

I thought Red Moon Pact was worse among all installments of Fox spirit matchmaker franchise, but Sword And Beloved proved me wrong,It's even worst.


If you want to watch this drama so badly bcz of cheng yi, just watch the first 13 episodes and STOP THERE & assume It's one of the best dramas out there then move on.I wonder whether the main lead actors & actresses only got this first 1/3rd of the script and accepted their roles bcz no way they could've read the entire scriptbook and still accepted this inconsistent illogical mediocre mess.Such a waste of talented cast.


Main leads storyline - So this drama was supposed to be the story of Male lead Wangquan Fugui And his Heaven & earth sword heart .But his sword meridians were cut off and he was sent to exile with a binding spell then he gradually appears less and less in the screentime that almost felt like he's doing a guest role in his own storyline,later came back with full screentime in the very last episodes to finish off the ultimate villain of fox spirit series, the Black Fox & the Grief tree...Fugui's potential 'beloved' is our Female Lead Qing Tong, who he saved with 10 years of his lifespan (well, no big matter, he also burned out his lifespan for a support role too, Fugui is just too kind in nature) FL also became a side character in the middle of the drama with no major impact in the storyline Except that she incidentally acquired a black grief tree seed (which i personally think was an entire dumb decision for her to follow those ''recipe books'' her evil brother gave to her lol) But then, FL had to sacrifice herself and ML had to kill her in the end for that seed (Did it really have to occur at the pavilion though? when it holds precious memories of us viewers from Love In pavilion, which is somehow a decent drama and the best among all 3 FSMM installments)
Still,Wangquan Fugui is the most watchable character of this drama & barely carried the drama in his back even when writers messed up his character to get it aligned with their shitty plot


2nd leads storyline - 2nd most watchable character of the drama was Quan Rumu,who is the cousin of Fugui, who had a loveline with the last dragon clan descendant demon, which at first looked so good and interesting, but then their story got dragged & i fast forwarded the hell out of it, both of the characters ended up as unnecessary deaths by our clown writers who probably have gone through so much sufferings in real life to venge it through the characters they write.My good advice to the Writers is, stop writing cdrama scripts and go get a life.


3rd leads storyline - Fan Yun Fei, a fox clan demon & Human Li Xueyang had their happy Ending but i doubt if anyone even cared for it in the end.But Yunfei added some comedies in the drama which viewers really enjoyed & he was one of the side characters that made sense,he had some good dynamics with our dear Fugui and Rumu and their scenes were enjoyable.


Main Antagonist - I don't have any energy to talk about that Black Fox and grief tree and seed thing bcz they are always the main villains of the FSMM stories and good characters always had to sacrifice themselves in order to 'purify' the hatred they gathered.This whole repetitive villain arc is boring and uninteresting.Rumu's father Quan Jingting is another loathsome villain who only schemed and Schemed Against his family & yiqi alliance all his life but still wasn’t unalived by the righteous alliance leaders for so many years which made no sense at all, Qing Tong's so called 'brother' Qing cheng who's another villain also got unnecessary long screentimes and angered the viewers in the most annoying ways possible. Only this two characters are Enough to drive the viewers to drop this drama in the Middle. Enduring their cheap dialogues for so long which made little sense probably took some lifespans from my life.


Drama is full of unnecessary side plots and side characters which added no value in the main storyline and not to even mention the plotholes as usual like the other 2 previous installments. Martial arts scenes were less than expected, but done very well by Actors and with good CGI, Emotional scenes literally felt flat so i'd say directions & camerawork were bad,but as the actors were all fine,they somehow managed to create the impact of the scenes.


This is one of the biggest disappointments of 2025 and i'd not recommend this to anyone, it didn’t sadden me a bit with It's sad (or rather open) ending bcz ending was also messy and laughable. i am just relieved that it came to an end, now people won't have to suffer anymore with this Fox spirit matchmaker disaster saga.This is also one of those rare cases ever in my 11 years of watching Asian dramas that i rated a drama 9 at initial episodes but ended up with a 7 in the end,...5 or 6 would be a more perfect Rating but i had to consider the amazing cast list's hard Work and dedications for a rotten stupid script for which i Wonder if they had to nauseate while filming certain scenes bcz they were so badly written.


i sincerely wish cheng yi would choose a good script with good production house and good writers & directors in the future.

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