Chinese dramas are always hit or miss for me. I often find that they struggle with pacing, overinflated casts, and solid storylines. Ancient Love Poetry, to my extreme pleasure, suffered from almost none of these and is on par with Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms in terms of quality. Nearly everything was perfect from the acting to the sets to the OST. I enjoyed every moment of watching it and will definitely watch again in the future.

The story is relatively simple, but I found that to be a strength. Instead of getting bogged down with multiple side stories or an overcomplicated plot, it pretty well stuck to the main story. And that story is played out very well, with enough action and slow moments to balance things out and keep the viewer engaged. It is, at its heart, a love story, and not just romantic love, but also the love of family and friends and how that love changes and shapes the characters. Pacing, something that I nearly always find fault with in Chinese dramas, was actually quite good. The first few episodes are necessarily slow in order to set the background and build up the characters and story, but I didn't find it boring. There are certainly a few episodes that seemed more filler than substance, but I can't even really complain too much about those as I didn't feel they dragged too much.

The acting is superb, I truly couldn't find much to fault with any of them. Zhou Dong Yu and Xu Kai were excellent in the leading roles. I was very impressed with how they both created such unique and separate character for Shang Gu/Hou Chi and Bai Jue/Qing Mu/Bo Xuan respectively. While they appeared the same, obviously, their characters were so different that there wasn't any chance with confusing one for the other. Jenny Zhang was fantastic as Wu Huan, just every part of her performance was flawless. She made Wu Huan into such a complex character and I really enjoyed watching the character development or devolvement, in her case. I've always enjoyed watching Lai Yi, he's an excellent actor and he just blends into whichever character he plays. While I enjoyed his performance as a younger Gu Jun, I was truly impressed by his acting after the fall of the God Realm. He perfectly played the role of doting father as well as aloof god. His interactions were Zhou Dong Yu were so sweet to watch and I was impressed with the both of them considering there's only a two year age difference. Liu Xue Yi was very entertaining to watch as Tian Qi, I imagine he must have had a lot of fun with that role. As I said before, this was just such a phenomenal cast, from the leads to all the side characters, they all just did such an amazing job bringing this drama to life.

While I often find that Chinese dramas have overinflated casts where there's no possible way to do justice to all the characters, I found that Ancient Love Poetry didn't suffer from this nearly as much. There were a handful of instances where I wondered what had happened to a character since they just seemed to be forgotten, but overall, I was very impressed with how well all of the characters were incorporated and given their own stories. I enjoyed the side couples and was pleased to see that they weren't neglected and actually had solid storylines for the most part. I truly enjoyed each and every character and I didn't really feel that any of them were overly superfluous or unnecessary. I also appreciated the amount of character growth seen, whether good or bad, in many of the characters. Even some more of the minor characters showed significant character growth and I enjoyed seeing that.

Another issue I tend to have with primarily Chinese dramas is their tendency to let off the villains lightly after they've hurt or killed countless people. I have mixed feelings about how Wu Huan was dealt with. On the one hand, her going mad seems to be letting her off easy, but if she was just killed, that would have been too good for her. I also felt like Jing Zhao got off pretty easy with just losing her voice. However, what offsets the disappointment of the villains getting of lighter than I would like, is the fact that nearly everyone who dies comes back. I was so happy to see Hong Ri back there at the end, as well as to hear that Gu Jun and Jing Jian were going to be coming back as well, though I would have really liked to see them reunited with their loved ones.

The OST was gorgeous, the songs fit with the story and emotions of the episodes. I was really impressed with it and have been enjoying continuing to listen to it.

The production was well done, it was obvious that this was a higher budget drama. Despite the extensive use of CGI, for the most part, it didn't look or feel fake. I particularly liked how each location had its own theme in terms of style and how it fit with the characters. The costuming was gorgeous as it always is in these dramas. I liked how the character's costumes changed depending on where they were in life. There's a subtle, but distinct difference between how Shang Gu dressed and how Hou Chi is dressed and the same goes for Bai Jue and Qing Mu as well as other characters. It was all very well done.

I really cannot recommend this drama enough. It captured me from the opening credits and held me until the end credits of the final episode. It was a very enjoyable experience and one I look forward to repeating in the future.