For me the attraction is the wuxia. I am cool with them not sticking to history and just using it as a convenient backdrop for the story. Would you say the story itself is good? Also how is the action choreography and stunt work?
Still haven't had a chance to get to it, but hearing mixed things. I heard the first episode is a bit tedious but it gets better.
The action quality and stunt work is solid, professional stuff. I've certainly seen worse in A-movie titles.
The story is...ok. It's not insult-my-intelligence stupid, even if Marco gets awarded a vast amount of trust, very quickly, and nobody seems to have any language issues (that's one of things I really enjoyed about the TV version of Clavell's Shogun, is how the language barrier makes the cultural barrier even more confounding).
But just imagine if they'd gone hardcore on the realism, a la Deadwood, the series would have been pretty awesome...it's not like the Khanate story isn't amazing all by itself. The Khan was not a random murdering thug pointlessly doing stuff...but they never really focus on the things that would make me come back and watch the series again.
Instead, it's a decently made serial, a sliver better than a legion of other action serials that use reality as a backdrop for having vaguely interesting stuff happen.