The landscape is impossibly gorgeous, I haven't played a game this pretty in a long time. Finding the shrines, petting the foxes, and writing haiku are all so much fun. The combat is dynamic and exciting. The duels are breathless and cinematic. The moments after completing a mission when you chill with your horse are cute and fun.
HOWEVER, the story is bog-standard open-world storytelling, and the tropes of an open world are shoehorned in kind of painfully. Getting a poison that makes your enemies fight each other? Yawn, except now the game tries to make you feel guilty for using poisons after forcing you to use poison. Being the rebel reclaiming the land and building up a resistance? Yep, you're going to do it again. The only open-world trope that's missing is climbing a tall tower to open up the map.
It's worth it to explore the landscape and the world, and to find the beauty in the world around you. But if you get annoyed by the generic parts of an open-world game, you will probably get really annoyed by those impossible-to-ignore aspects.
A show about a horse seems strange, but it works! The characters are well defined and the plot is meaningful. In retrospective, I can hardly think of anything this show does wrong. I can higly recommend it if you are looking for something both entertaining and dramatic.
I'm happy there is more Asian representation in the film industry, but keep in mind her father is one of the richest people in China so she's had probably every advantage an Asian person could have.
