The art is better than most and while the artists don't focus on the blood and guts it is there. It is shown to be more realistic than most war anime.
The sound is alright with a few selected ost that are good but nothing that truly stands out. This is one of the things that stop this series from being great. Most truly great anime have at least a single soundtrack that absolutely blows your mind such as Gate of Steiner, Half of Death Notes soundtrack, and the entirety of FullMetals soundtrack.
The character and story need to be linked together. They are the best part of this anime. The characters are portrayed realistically with their own quirks, goals, and motivations. I wish they had a bit more of the fears but still would rate it well. The story progresses in arcs that are handled well with pretty good resolutions that even tie into each other instead of one offs. It keep pace with some of the themes of the story such as the price for doing good, scientific advancement, and corruption/incompetence costs.
I enjoyed this anime a lot. You might be wondering why I gave it only a 7 then. The mood comes across heavy handed. This is a war and tactics anime and it handles itself like that. The story leaves me in a somber mood. I found myself hoping for nothing bad to happen rather than have the main characters succeed. The one thing that this story severely lacked was touching moments. They instead mostly had heart rending ones. I just wanted one or two moments where I could've gone squee over.
