It only took few glimpses of this drama for me see how confident it is in its dialogue, plot, acting, execution.... everything. It doesn't waste time to make it apparent that you need a shift of viewing lens to watch it- as the characters are not gonna behave/plots are not going to unfold in the way you'd expect it to, therefore you need to brave yourself for a ride and let the story sweep you away in its witty, crackastic, dangerous glory. And the essence of Sword Snow Stride is perfectly represented via Xu Fengnian, and honestly there's no better man for this job like Zhang Ruoyun.
At first you might think it's like Joy of Life. But as you go, it feels like a strange mix of all sorts of genres, but somehow it works. To me it felt like a mix of slice-of-life, deadpan humor, politics, prime wuxia and also some Greek Hero-friends-on-quest-across-the-world vibe.

And I think Sword Snow Stride is really good at creating atmosphere, and in fact one of the best I've seen recently.
Sure, the drama suffers from color palette issues, poor martial arts choreo issues and all, but in the scenes where it really mattered, they went all out creating the gravitas of the scene and I was blown with the impact. Also throughout the drama it had a particular affliction with using rain and wind to heighten the scenes, and not in a cringey way but in a way that you'd feel it in your bones through the screen. The following scenes are best examples imo.
1. The Capping Ceremony
2. The Naval battle (Reminded me of Argonautica haha)
3. Battle of the Reed field (goosebumps just from thinking about it)
4. The Thunderstorm battle
5. Sword cloud

And it has some really good wuxia logics/theories, you'd think the stuff they do would really be probable in real world, only if we had the extra oomph of Qi cultivation. It's definitely no casual scriptwriting. And overall Sword Snow Stride has quite solid planning, and lot of plot-within-plots.
(Though I won't deny it did have its lazy writing/deux ex machina moments, and the "Daddy Xu Xiao is the almighty Chess master/God" thing started to get old after a while)

But overall one of the best wuxia dramas I've seen recently, despite some flaws here and there. Though I have to say it's the kind of a drama that appeals to a specific palette. If it works for you it works, if it doesn't then it doesn't.
So I think SSS is definitely worth checking out, if you are a fan of *handwaving motions* any of the stuff I mentioned above.