I've read the original novel and I just have to say that while I understand that it would be impossible for the drama to adapt 1700 chapters and several million words into a 40 episode drama series, and obviously their budget for game animation would have had significant limits so that the large-scale battles and boss raids in the novel couldn't have taken center stage. There's several changes that I did like, too-- Ye Xiu having zero life skills and constantly being clowned on by customers and his boss? Hysterical. Love it. I liked the expansion of Ye Xiu's past with Su Muqiu and Tao Xuan, too-- it made all the present day scenes hit harder, knowing where exactly he came from. Qiu Fei's new interpretation suprised me a bit but yknow, I can get behind it.

But... I really wish that the changes had focused more on the strategy and politics parts of the novel, which is where I thought Butterfly Blue's novel shone the most. I loved the lavish detail that they spent on describing tactics and all the maneuvering, and I was looking forwards to seeing that! However, where I'm at in the drama, the most significant changes I see are that they've add what is essentially several episode's worth of meaningless fluff with Chen Guo vacillating from silly antics to self doubt at her ability to manage a guild. She feels seriously defanged to me in the drama, which is disappointing.

Actors are all pretty good, Yang Yang is the prettiest man alive, soundtrack... all I have to say is that if you watch like 5 episodes in a row it starts to get repetitive because all the tracks seem to be derived from like the same 3 sonds, but generally speaking it does the job of setting the mood.