Let me first say that I thought the acting was quite good. Any issues I have with the series lie elsewhere. I especially like the female lead (Yue Yu, I believe). Her acting was spot on, and she is very beautiful.
The second leads were great also, and I like their story.
The story was predictable and brought nothing new to the table. You could guess where the whole thing was headed pretty early on. The action scenes were pretty lame, actually. Again not the actors fault. It seemed like every good guy was getting stabbed all the time, and not bringing a knife or gun to the fight. Although one good guy has a gun at one random point, begging the question of why they didn't have them during the other fight scenes. Go figure.
There we a number of plot holes. And it was pretty annoying that the bad guys were always one step ahead of our supposedly super smart hero.
By the way, I watched a trailer for the sequel and it looked better. Maybe. The ML's fighting skills seem to have been upgraded :-). Although I didn't get how this was really a sequel based on the plot, but maybe I'm just dense.
So, for me, a 7 overall. If it has not been for the nice acting, I would have rated this a 6.
