Reply 1994 follows a similar formula to 1997. It's focusing on the friendships/family & the triangle evenly. I generally don't like triangles, here without the "who is the husband" flashforwards it wouldn't have been so bad, because the second lead never had any chances & he did not have an excessive amount of screen time either.
What especially annoyed me is how the main leads have broken up at episode 18-19. If I wanted to be generous I could understand, that the writer's intent for them was transitioning from puppy love to mature love via hardship, but the entire thing made little sense to me. Kdrama logic is certainly insane on many occasions, but she had to go to Australia of all places for 2 years, as a computer science graduate..... I understand why this would resonate with Koreans, because this is exactly how 30% of the couples break up, when the guy goes to the army for 2 years, but it was still very frustrating to watch.
The pacing is strange too, the first 16-17 episodes were rather slow & relaxed, even boring at times, then everything went to shit, followed by one episode that quickly wrapped up everything in 30 minutes, as if nothing happened. (then they talked A LOT about Korean football, maybe the product placement quota needed to be filled up?) This could have been a real excellent 16 episodes long drama, had they taken out the unnecessary filler.

Despite all the above Reply 94 was still quite amazing. The nostalgia factor is still there, the cinematography was way ahead of its time, it is a funny and witty show too. The cast was awesome, maybe even better than in 1997. Go Ara's transformation into a country bumpkin amazed me to no end.

(ppl who watch kdramas to advance their Korean language studies shouldn't bother with this, because it's impossible to understand anything :D)