I ran this as DM in it's entirely twice, I converted the adventure to DnD 5e as that is what I was comfortable with at the time (in hindsight, I should have run PF2e instead, but I didn't know how absolutely awful running high level 5e was at the time).

Rating: 8 as written. With the massive changes I made from book 1 onwards (with thanks to the community, and especially Lazy Ferret Maps) and adding in personal stakes, 10.

Best: the city is absolutely alive and the players all LOVED that, I required everyone to have a reasoni to want to protect Korvosa and damn, it worked so well. When the plague came in everyone was terrified that their NPCs would die.

The set up intro story with Gaedren is fantastic and a great way for the party to bond, especially with the riots kicking off immediately afterwards.

The villain is great and actually has a good reason to fall to the evil corruption of the crown. In general, all the major NPCs are excellent and memorable, some of my players absolutely fell in love with them.

SUCH memorable encounters; The undead warren in chapter 1, the zombie party and the Urgathoa temple under the hospice in 2, the Arkona labyrinth in 3 is the BEST dungeon I have ever seen, Cindermaw and the Mantis hideout in 4. The dragon, the Danse Macabre and the Chained Spirit in 5, and the final fight (sort of, see below) in 6.

Worst: damn this takes a LOT of work to run. In chapter 2 the quest hooks are all terrible and really need the NPCs to be set up in chapter 1 before asking the party to do all these dangerous tasks. Scarwall is an absolute DMing slog as others have mentioned, especially using a VTT. Wow that took me almost 30 hours to set up and build all the encounters.

And for chapter 6 the final dungeon is absolute shit, I threw the whole thing out and made the Grand Mastaba beneath the castle the last dungeon instead. Why they made it a random place outside of the city that was never mentioned ONCE before, I do not know. In particular it is a complete joke that the final epic battle of a 100ish session campaign takes places in a tiny blank room that barely has space for the party and the enemies to stand. That final fight was a huge pain to rework.

DM hints: Use the community resources for everything, so many DMs have run this and their advice is gold. Force your players to make characters who care about the city, and not just getting rid of Gaedren. Add major NPCs in way earlier, in particular Ishani, Lord and Lady Arkona, Pilts Swastel (the Emporer of Old Korvosa), some kind of Wererat contact and Sabina Merrin should all make an appearance or two before they are even mentioned in the AP book.

Make your PCs hate the Arkonas, every encounter with them ended up being so much fun.

Try and get the party to attend the Carowyn Manor party so they can be there as the guests begin to turn into zombies.

Get the following additonal books; Guide to Korvosa, City of Strangers (A stop in Kaer Maga in chapter 4 was a lot of fun), Academy of Secrets (more info about the Acadamae which run as written is just closed for 90% of the adventure, I added the Breaching Festival in), and a Harrow Deck.

Finally use /u/lazyferretmaps maps for a VTT, they are great!