This is not hard historical fiction, it is a cross between a manhua and a fairy tale, turned into a tv-series, just to help set the right expectations. If going in, expecting something remotely historical, then they you be disappointed, and that would be a disservice to an excellent story.

If you're wondering if you should watch it, as it is so long, just watch the first one or two episodes, it gives a good feel of what to expect. This is mostly a fun-series. There will be some tears, people do die, but their is no angst here, it's mostly sweet romance and heroics.

Production: The Long Ballad is based on Xia Da's manhua Chang Ge Xing, which was published from 2011 to 2016. The manhua has received numerous awards such as the Golden Dragon Award for Best Girls' comic and the Newcomer Award at the first Sino-Japanese Youth Exchange Cartoon Festival. [1] I haven't read the manhua (yet), but it as been translated and the parts I did read are fantastic. The story is good enough that I want to read the manhua, despite it (also) being terribly long. 9/10

Story: I hate spoilers, so I won't be adding any here. This is your basic fairy tale. Princess gets into trouble. Princess meets handsome prince. It takes them a while to figure things out. Plenty of people die... The story is not exceptional, but told well. The characters are believable, and make sense. Chinese series like to red-wedding endings, but this one had a (reasonably) good ending. Not too many open loops. But as said before, maybe the manhua is a bit deeper. But well... books vs movies is an eternal dispute, TLB is no exception. 8/10

Acting: Dilraba Dilmurat (the main reason I started to watch) is a beautiful woman, maybe one day she'll learn to be a great actress as well. The acting in TLB is only so-so, for most of the actors. Honestly, I found Rosy Zhao and Liu Yu Ning the best characters, they would score an 8.5/10, they showed real personal growth, many of the others a bit less. This is a long story with many characters, although nobody really shows deep character development, many acted really well and made the episodes fly by. I would say it is not disturbingly bad, but not great either. 7/10

Visual FX: As the story is based on a manhua, they decided to combine images and video together to tell the story. It was done really well. It made the story easier to watch, there are no bloody battles, those are replaced with images, and left to the imagination of the viewer. It kept the story light and fit well with the overall feel. The costumes and sets looked real enough, just a bit manhua-ish, but not distractedly so. Overall, I really liked it: 9/10

OST: The title song is very good, the tone of the song and the lyrics fit very well with the story, and even though it played a gazillion times, it did not get boring, a testament to a really well made song. There was a surprisingly large amount of songs in the series, which was a bit weird, but strangely I didn't hate it. I personally prefer an OST that stays in the background, highlighting the visuals, here the songs really were a goal in themselves. Not my thing, but it was still done with good taste and style: 8/10

Rewatch value: There are so many series to watch, that something must be truly exceptional or somehow personally resonate with you to watch it again. This series is way too long to just sit and watch again on a lazy Sunday afternoon, so I'll just skip grading this one. I probably won't watch it again (completely), but that's more because it's length then any other reason.

Conclusion: Just watch it. It is a light and happy story, with beautiful people and swords and costumes, what more do you want?!

References:

- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Ballad