I wanted to watch this drama because of the hype and also because of the director. To be honest , I agree that among many many costume c-dramas, this is one of the good ones given the fact that this is released in 2015. But whether you will like this drama and find it captivating or not depends on what kind of c-dramas you have watched before. For eg., if you had watched Joy of Life before this , you will seriously be bored and disappointed by this drama. On the other hand , if you had watched romance k-dramas/c-drams always and wanted to try a political costume c-drama for the first time , you may feel pretty happy with this.

Another major pain point is, this drama is conversation heavy. Around 80 % of the time, it is just somebody talking about the revenge, plot etc., And the flashback scenes are cut heavily because of Zhang Zhehan's problem in China ( which is really frustrating in my opinion). And the music is not that great or memorable. I felt that the drama is dragged unnecessarily until 54 episodes. it could have been closed at 40.
I thank the team for not bringing romance into this and sticking to revenge political plot.

One of the BIGGEST disappointments for me is, the sequel of this is actually not a real sequel. Nirvana is Fire 2 is actually a different drama just with some links to the past. I expected Fei Lu, Meng, Jingrui, Lin Shu in sequel.. but it didn't happen.

Will I recommend this to you? If you are new to political revenge plots in c-drama world, you can give this a try.
If you had already watched master pieces like Joy of Life or if you don't like too much talking , this is not for you.stay away.

Did I enjoy watching this? Not really.