Issues with the anime, in a nutshell:
[*] butchers the art style; Alicia in particular looks very off model
[*] utterly butchers the original characters and overall writing / tone – the original actually felt like a bunch of anime-ish young people that ended up in fantasy WW2; this does not, and undersells the qualifications and training that Welkin et al had to, probably, make this feel more like a "relatable" shinji-fell-in-a-robot type story to young japanese people
[*] turns Alicia into a tsundere, and butchers most of her original characterization
[*] reportedly (note: I haven't actually seen this, but according to other reviews) completely glosses / omits over some of the critical darksens + empire / nazi germany scenes from the game. There were only a few of these scenes in the game, and was pretty subtle, but was one of the better depictions from the perspective of a frontline soldier of a holocaust-analogue (and "work in progress") in popular fiction. Absolutely shameful, but then again not surprising, that they would remove most of that here.
[*] if the original was anime-ish, THIS anime is chock-full of the absolute worst anime tropes (eg. "fanservice"), and is an awful desecration / "reinterpretation" of the original source material: even if most of the major plot points are similar, they're not necessarily executed well, and the character and writing improvements are very specific and are NOT an improvement. If there's anything in particular that could be said is often wrong with modern anime as a medium (and target audience, specifically) this is it, in a nutshell
[*] A1 is capable of great work, so they have no excuse whatsoever (although judging this in the light of later, excellent works, like 86, might be a bit unfair)
Overall, avoid. This is hardly the worst anime ever made, to be clear (and clearly, probably, took quite a bit of work to actually make) – but it's an awful handling / reinterpretation of the original source material, and it'd be an utter shame if anyone saw this first and got an awful (or at least mediocre) impression of the source material as such.
If you want a (great) experience of this, go pick it up and play the original game off steam instead.
The fact that the original game basically flopped in Japan (probably in large part because the game is very western-focused, and japanese audiences seem to apparently not be interested in a band-of-brothers style story about fantasy WW2), is basically why we can't have nice things. This anime, and for that matter valkyria 2 / 3, is as much a part of the problem here as anything else.
(though if you want a great anime to watch, also made by A1, see 86 – it's a much darker take on a similar-ish WW2-inspired premise (with a romance subplot), and I'd be VERY surprised if the author wasn't at least partially inspired / influenced by the Valkyria Chronicles game, among other things)
[3/10] Overall
[4/10] Art + animation (points deducted for off model character designs, specifically Alicia and the fact that Isara has stupidly large anime eyes for some reason in this – and the fact that all tanks here seem to die in a single shot, and the Eidelweiss is portrayed as a super-tank (which it is not), and has utterly ridiculous handling + speed in the anime for a tank that size / weight (again, portrayed perfectly fine in the video game))
[3/10] Music + sound design (almost exclusively uses game soundtracks, and doesn't necessarily use / edit them well; decently good OP)
[0/10] Writing (I don't care if this anime "expands" on the original's world building; the anime's take on many if not all of the game's characters is utter dogshit, to say the least, and the plot / story changes don't improve the original's (barebones) writing, at all)
Addendum: the original game has a FANTASTIC english voice cast, and should put a lie to the idea that anime can't have good / great dubs as well, if funded (and directed, and integrated + planned for) appropriately. The anime obviously is japanese only (and uses the same cast as the game), but I would actually argue that that's to its detriment, since the english VAs actually had a much better and more nuanced take on the original characters, imo
Overall, very late take on an old anime + game, but that's my 2c
