Record of the Lodoss War is not a hidden gem and the people who like it are talking with Rose-Tinted Glasses on. They story is all over the place and episodes skip context that would make the next episodes make sense. The narrator will say some important information non-chalantely and then move on with "more important things." They were traveling for an entire episode to meet an important old wizard. Then the next episode hits and their in the castle, they skipped over the meeting with this important old wizard who's integral to the plot. He appears in like 4 episodes not directly with our main cast, and we don't feel the impact of it because his importance is so vague.
The animation is bad even for when it came out, its clear that they had no budget. Lots of stills and with zoom in, zoom out, pan to the left, and pan to the right shots. I can forgive bad animation if the story and characters are interesting. But like I said before the story is all over the place, we fight 4 villains in a short 13 episodes. The villains are propped up and then instantly defeated it makes them laughable. The characters are legit archetypes they have little to no personality. We have the standard brave knight, snooty elf, wise mage, and mischievous thief. Parn is our main character and he sucks. He's bad with a sword then gets slightly better with a sword. But the problem wasn't that he was bad with a sword. The problem was that he rushes into dangerous situations without thinking. He never stops doing this and he always gets his ass kicked. He survives 80% of the time on pure luck, or because his friends happen to be in the right place at the right time.
