Despite having only seen the first two episodes of House of the Dragon, I think it's already safe to say that this series is not going to live up to it's hype. This series is just NOT on the same level as it's predecessor. It's been more than 10 years since the first season of GoT aired on HBO, and watching the first episode of HotD feels like we've gone back in time. Of course, storywise we're set back about 172 years in Targaryen family history, but what I mean is productionwise. Compared to GoT, the whole look and feel of HotD is a complete downgrade. From the costumes, the characters, the attention to detail, to the overall use of CGI, it's just never on the same level as GoT. In a show that focuses mainly on the 'house of Dragons' you would expect these dragons to look absolutely flawless, like Drogon in GoT. They don't. They look like what you would expect from a show on TV-show budget. GoT went way beyond that level. Another thing that bothered me was the lack of charisma or realism in the characters. With most of the Targaryens you can clearly see they're all wearing wigs. As for king Vyseris; he looks almost cartoonish, as if he just walked off some Disney-live action Fairytale movie set. Same goes for Daemon. His armor in the first episode during the joust game just looks ridiculous, with the flappy dragon wings on his helmet. Remember Jaimie Lannisters armor in GoT? Or even that of The Mountain? THAT is how you make an armor look realistic. These armors represented the persons wearing it. It showed their persona. Damon's armor is just a poorly designed, cartoonishly caricatural representation of a bad guy.

I could go on about all the details that bothered me in this show, or the clearly forced sex scenes and brutal violence the first episode is packed with, but overall it's just clear that what we've got here is a show that desperately and forcefully tries to be as good as GoT, but just never reaches that level.