The show has a lot of good and a lot of bad going for it. I would say it's a product of the "Golden Era" television - it's got the care and talent that makes it clearly stand out as a well-put-together piece of media.

All of its issues fall with its massively inconsistent writing:

• the pacing is completely out of wack. Some seasons lead to nothing, some seasons ignore the conflict until they easily solve the issue in the end

• the characters are so dramatic with how they speak it gets compared to a soap opera, and for good reason, you want to make a scene more compelling? Why not have someone tell another character to kill themselves

• the Dutton's will face a season of battering from the antagonist to have Rip or Kayce go kill them in 30 seconds

• Beth despite being written like a psychopathic idiot, always ends up on top, even when she's literally telling people what she's going to do

• one of the more compelling characters, Jamie is supposed to be this genius lawyer who is feared for his savant level knowledge of the law, but is constantly being a bumbling idiot

• Jimmy takes up a lot of the storyline but adds nothing, ironically is one of the more interesting parts of the story as he's a bit more grounded

• Monica starts off being the voice of reason in season 1 to being a complete idiot

• Taylor Sheridan subjects us to Travis way too often in the later seasons

EDIT: That made it seem like the show is worse than it is. Everything else is great in the show: acting, character dynamics, setting, directing, and while the pacing, logic, and dialogue are hit-or-miss the storylines presented are very compelling.

I see SoA getting brought up a lot, and I think that's kind of the inverse of Yellowstone - it feels like a pre-golden era tv show - bogged down by cable tv shlockyness, it had strong pacing and storytelling to prop it up

The conquest would only really work for a mini series or something. The conquest is like 2 battles - 1 of which is essentially a trap where they very easily win. They breeze through everything because of dragons, Aegon wins over the admiration of everyone very easily, every minor conflict they instantly solve with dragons, the only campaign that is drawn out is Dorne and that's mostly them burning down empty castles because the Dorne's refuse to fight them.