The romance is strong in this drama. I could not stop squeeing out loud, almost constantly wearing a stupid grin on my face. So many butterflies in my stomach, swooning every minute. In fact I adored this show and I'm so happy I found it.
So let me brake down the good and bad. If you are ok with classical tropy characters and can look past some of the issues with the story elements, this will probably satisfy you if you are looking for a sweet young romance.
The story concentrates mostly on the romance that is strong from the start. Problems are thrown onto the path of the leads, but their constant trust in each other is adorable. Nothing seems to rock their faith in each other.
The setting partly in game and mostly IRL is fun and engaging. However as I am myself a game developer of triple A games, some elements of the business broke my immersion. I don't think most people will notice, and isn't it a problem in any movie and drama that features certain occupations and businesses.
As the story is a classical Harlequin like set up, with the strong, silent, mysterious, genius guy and the intelligent, good hearted and sweet girl there were moments of the really annoying "damsel in distress" trope.
Even more annoying is the "being the most beautiful is an instant win". Looks are the only thing that matters and any social issues are solved by showing up and being pretty.
Then again. I didn't know how much I would enjoy even these aspects. It was a very long time ago I consumed this kind of romance between a perfect pair who are the envy of all. Once in a while (once a decade) the feeling of squeeing like a 14 year old over a hot guy who is the perfect image of a gentleman actually was very satisfying.
The actors are very stiff. The main male lead has a stick driven through his body making it almost impossible for him to move his neck and he is constantly looking at something far away instead of seeking eye contact with the female lead. I understand he is supposed to be elusive, stoic and mysterious, however it's too much. He is very good at kissing, so it makes up for his stone face statue like aura.
The female lead is directed to talk with a squeaky baby voice and act all super cutesy. She is also directed to not respond to the kisses besides wide eyed look like she is almost being assaulted and is prepared to flee. I must say, for some reason I actually got into the whole innocent act and it does pay of in the final episode. The build up of a certain scene was kind of hot...
My favourite character is the support actress who played the room mate Er Xi. She is supposed to be an average looking nerdy type, but is the most beautiful one out of the large cast of females. This annoyed the hell out of me, when they constantly referred to her as ugly and stupid. Her role was to play over cutesy, a bit stupid and clowny. But her story line really engaged me and I loved her development (what little there was). I thought she was the one that had the hardest problems and felt much more sympathy for her than the main female lead. I really hurt for her once the situation blew up.
As someone who always does queer reading the relationship between two of the guys was very sweet. There is really no room to misunderstand their relationship... ^^ Also a checkbox checked in the satisfaction column. I could wish for more, but was surprised over how clear they dared to show the gay couples relationship.
The special effects suited an ingame environment. And the music was partly game inspired or nice romantic. Pretty ok production value and the directing clearly worked for this type of genre.
Over all I am giving it a much higher value than I "personally" usually assign by my standards and requirements. I would probably then land on a 7. But I'm going to look past the issues and just go with my gut feeling. By my gut feeling, emotions and satisfaction that this drama gave me I should actually give it a perfect 9... I'll compromise and we land on an 7.5.
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