The villians were cartoonish in their antics with several filler-like episodes; villains show up, cause problems, drats foiled again! Their motivations are never defined, just senseless prejudice to give Naofumi something to hate.
The sword and bow hero show some awareness of something going on (after too many episodes), however never make any meaningful decisions and remain useless.
Filo is an overpowered mascot figure, no backstory or depth to her actions, which is fine except for the one battle where Filo goes full "NAKAMA POWER" which felt very out of place and forced.
If it wasn't for how comical the villians were, more credit could have been given to side characters that believed in Naofumi.
As for Naofumi, from naive to only placing trust on a contract/business deal basis to finally being able to smile and make friends again, Naofumi's development was the most natural. Although his initial motivation was simply to survive/take revenge, his pairing with Raphtalia helped him empathise with the weak as he later seeks to protect them.
However, Naofumi developing offensive capabilities which end up 1 shotting most major enemies detracts from the original premise to the point where nothing presents any real challenge to spur further development.
Raphtalia had some great moments in the first half, overcoming her past, standing up for Naofumi and fighting hand in hand with him, but her role dimishes to just emotional support which gets repetitive.
The queen's debut episode was well worth the wait (though I binged the whole series in a day).
The story progression was severely delayed in favor of side quests which could have easily been used for side character development, yet little to none of that happened because "ooh Naofumi bad, don't believe what he says". The main mystery in the story is introduced in the first episode and finally makes progress in the last episode.
This could have easily been 12 episodes without losing anything of value, however for the few highlights this was still entertaining.
