YMMV / The Advisor's Alliance

• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Leaving out Sima Gan's birth, which could have added more family hijinks to the Sima family, as Yi and Chunhua had to juggle a young child who is young enough to be his brothers' son ^note Gan was only about 4 years older than his nephew Sima Yan, the future Emperor Wu of Jin.. Granted, part 2 was considerably darker, and such a plotline may not have suited the series.
  • Leaving out Sima Yan when he was historically about 13 when the incident at Gaoping Tombs occurred.
  • Leaving out Cao Zhi's warning to his nephew on Sima Yi's growing ambitions. Cao was regarded as the first person to sound such a warning.
• Unconventional Learning Experience: The series is a good place to begin one's learning of poems from the Jian'an era, as the Cao brothers (Pi and Zhi) are regarded as masters, and many excerpts of their poems are featured in-series.