It had good acting, beautiful scenery/setting but the character building/world building fell flat to me. Whether it was the huge amount of time jumps, trying to kill off characters that we really havent gotten to know or just the basic writing of each episode I dont have any connection to most of the major characters. When I watched S1 of game of thrones last month I saw the amount of characters that had been written well enough we all knew who they were and if what we should feel about them. Its like 20+ meaningful characters in the first season of GOTs while in HOTD its about 6? The only kid who was really given any chance to grow/connect with is Aemond in my opinion.

Was this show better than anything on TV this fall? Yeah it was, but thats because everything else was pretty bad. Was this show anywhere as good as Game of Thrones S1? No its more like the final seasons of game of thrones than the beginning in my opinion.

Final grade: 7.25/10