Americans Hate Tingle: Susie is one of the most hated units in the game overseas because of her Humanitarian potential, which can cause her to refuse to attack an enemy. In Japan, she's popular enough to become a member of the Edy Detachment, and make Continuity Cameo appearances in II and III.
Angst? What Angst?: Shows up mere minutes into the game. In the opening, Welkin just saw several innocent villagers gunned down, and then participated in the death of the soldiers responsible. He doesn't seem any more concerned about it than someone who was slightly delayed on the way home.
Base-Breaking Character: The Imperial characters and how much sympathy they can and should be afforded. On the one hand, they're not merely complicit in but actively engaging in multiple wars of totally unjustified naked aggression and conquest, including not a little genocide and not a few war crimes. The very first thing the Imperials are shown to do in Gallia is go out of their way to mow down a family of refugees, children and older adult noncombatants, with gunfire and grenades, and the very first thing an Imperial soldier with lines does on-screen is attempt to commit a hate-crime against what he thinks is an unarmed teenager; no sign is ever given that any of the Imperial high command so much as disapprove of their soldiers figuratively and literally raping Gallia and Selvaria actually has a line boasting about it. On the other hand, attempts are made to give some depth to Maximillian (having his own Dark and Troubled Past of coming out from a horrible succession war that costed him his family, and having strict discipline when it comes to warfare and patriotism(country sellouts are unwelcome in his vision)), Selvaria (has her own tragic past and unrequited genuine love on Maximillian as well as being A Mother To Her Men), Jaeger (very affable and laid back as well as commanding a good deal of competence, as well as actually fighting because his own homeland is on the line), and Johann (a low-level mook who's afraid of violence but seemingly conscripted into the war). Gregor is the one everyone agrees is just a Hate Sink because he has no Freudian Excuse and being a concentration camp manager on top of being a Jerkass means that it's his job to be a hated villain.
Breather Level: Episode 9 (where Princess Cordelia is kidnapped) is a "puzzle" level setup that is substantially easier to get high rankings on than other levels, even on the first playthrough. It's possible to win in a single turn with a strong Shocktrooper and (ab)using order(s).
Complete Monster: Captain Giorgios Geld is a vicious Imperial war criminal renowned for his unparalleled cruelty and fetish for human suffering. Having previously served time for atrocities in the First Europan War, which includes torture against civilians, Geld is drafted into Prince Maximillian's independent invasion of Gallia. Geld, wasting no time misusing his authority, is discovered by Captain Eleanor Varrot torturing Gallian civilians for fun in a remote settlement. After being detained and placed at the mercy of a wrathful Varrot, whose lover he once tortured to death, Geld begs for his life and is reluctantly spared in a prisoner exchange after she is convinced to not become a monster like him. Geld's cruelty is such that he disgusts all his fellow Imperials, with an enraged Maximillian ultimately sentencing him to death upon his return.
Creepy Awesome: Jane and Wendy. The former is a blood-thirsty sadist with psychotic tendencies while the latter is a bomb-obsessed recluse.
Demonic Spiders: Any unit with debuffing weapons, but especially the Shocktroopers, who are deadly if the player attempts a scout rushing strat.
Faldio: "The people... Gallia needed her. Now let me ask you a question: how else do you think we could have won that battle? If not for Alicia's power, Gallia would have most certainly lost!"
Draco in Leather Pants: Selvaria. Maximilian used her genuine love for him to his advantage, subjected her to constant emotional manipulation for his own ends, and goaded her into committing mass murder-suicide, so she's The Woobie instead of an unapologetic slayer of thousands who describes conquering Gallia with a rape metaphor. Some fans in general try to act like the Imperials' Freudian Excuses and occasional moments of humanity make the conflict more morally grey than it actually is, considering the Imperials are, by design, an unholy fusion of everything wrong with imperial German, tsarist Russia, and the freaking Nazis, with all the utter disregard for human life that entails.
Edy, who isn't even a major character, is surprisingly popular in Japan to the extent that she has her own side chapter available as downloadable content. In fact, all of the members of the Edy DLC are Ensemble Darkhorses to some extent.
Has the potential to occur with many of the other recruits due to the fact that every last one of them has a unique appearance, personality and backstory. For example, Marina Wulfstan is quite popular as well, though it helps that she's badass and the best sniper you can recruit for your squad.
Nadine's selfless, hardworking personality has won her a lot of fans.
Jager's a fairly popular character himself, mostly for being as sympathetic as Selvaria (though not nearly as developed) in addition to being an awesome, if excruciatingly difficult, fight.
Vyse and Aika, thanks to being Crossover Cameo characters from Skies of Arcadia. It certainly helps that Vyse is one of the best Shocktroopers in the game and Aika is a very solid Scout unit.
Everyone is Jesus in Purgatory: All the Valkyria shown in the franchise are women (the anime even explicitly states that they are a One-Gender Race) who are seen as living weapons, are manipulated and abused by evil individuals to make use of their powers, and are motivated exclusively out of love for their handlers. A setup such as this one makes one wonder if the writers were trying to convey a message about misogyny and/or society's treatment of women in general.
Fashion-Victim Villain: Borg looks like a cross between Liberace and the Pope, and Maximilian's armor takes the Bling of War to extremes.
Faux Symbolism: The Valkyrur can blow themselves and everything within a mile's radius up, startlingly similar to the mushroom cloud created by nuclear bombs. In cutscenes at the beginning of the final chapter, Maximilian also wears a suit of armor with several Roman emperor motifs. A few people in Animesuki suggested thesamething.
Alicia, lethally accurate, highly mobile, and eventually able to heal to full in a turn, and unleash her Valkyria powers when injured. She can solo many levels. Most orders given to other soldiers eventually exist to support her one woman war. Scout Rush in general is a Game-Breaker; it's just that as the game progresses, "scout rush" becomes "Alicia rush" due to how powerful she is. This is the reason why the production team decided to nerf the scouts down a bit in Valkyria Chronicles II.
The Awaken Potential Order can be quite powerful depending on who it is used on. It can make unbalanced characters like Alicia into a One Woman Army considering it greatly increases the chance of powerful potentials like Resist Crossfire (where you can often walk through heavy interception fire without much fear), Mysterious Body (automatic full healing), Valkyria (attacks are more powerful and accurate), Undodgeable Shot (self explanatory), and Double Movement (often allowing you to cross the entire mission map in one or two turns) activating. With enough stacked boosts and high enough class levels, Alicia can even take out tanks by herself or A rank missions in record time.
Welkin Order: Penetrate (Ignore Armor), Order: Attack Weak Point (every hit is a critical hit, as long as it does any damage at all.) Takes 5 command points, but whoever that's ordered those two items will shred any tank or anything else in their vicinity. Even just Penetrate by itself can be pretty effective. Using it on a Shocktrooper can allow you to slowly but surely chip away at the health of tough armored targets like Jaeger's Lupus supertank, the Valkof lance tip, and even Valkyria Maximilian.
Marina Wulfstan, assuming the player takes the time to level up the Sniper class, becomes by far one of the deadliest units in the entire game because of her potentials giving her a chance to regain 1 ammo after shooting, and Ultimate Accuracy making sure she practically *never* misses her mark. With the right equipment, there's practically nothing stopping her from taking down anything but the most heavily armored units in the game in one shot.
Quite mysteriously for being a very anime series where the bad guys are clearly at least kind of channeling tsarist Russia, there seems to be a fairly sizable Russian fanbase who perform feats up to and including remaking the Edelweiss and Nameless Tank for use in World of Tanks, though they are no longer necessary, as far as the SEA server is concerned, as these two tanks were officially added into the game for that server only in mid-2017.
It has a popularity showing in the west in general due to it being an early PS3 title and the mild western vibe it has. From there word of mouth spread endearing various people to the game, resulting in the PC port outselling some of the AAA titles also launching at the time.
Good Bad Bug: The PC port initially shipped with a bug where the damage of interception fire was dependant on framerate, meaning at 60 FPS it was twice as dangerous. Some players actually preferred it this way and hoped the damage increase would stick after the bug was fixed, since it meant the common cheese strategy of rushing the objectives with scouts no longer worked.
Maximilian is an imperialistic warmonger who wants to conquer Europa and rule it in his image. However, in the eyes of the players, he is more hated for being an opportunistic Manipulative Bastard who commits casual acts of Domestic Abuseand orders said lover to become a suicide bomber when she is no longer of use to him.
This also applies to General Damon. While he is on the side of Gallia, he's a Politically Incorrect Hero who got his position in the army solely due to nepotism and is more than happy to let the Militia die if he can get a promotion for it. Nobody shed any tears when he was killed by Selvaria after she used her Final Flame.
Prince Maximilian Gaius Von Reginrave is the young and brilliant leader of The Empire who masterminds the invasion of Gallia. Having lost his beloved mother in an assassination attempt by another royal at a young age, Maximilian resolved to never be helpless again, ruthlessly scheming his way to the throne by eliminating his rivals. Seeking to harness the power of the Valkyrur through his right-hand woman Selvaria, Maximilian masterminds brilliant strategies and gambits against Gallia that nearly sees the nation fall multiple times. To wipe out the Gallian army, Maximilian manipulates Selvaria into sacrificing herself in a suicide attack that takes out the Gallian royal command, with the only thing stopping him being the heroine Alicia awakening her own Valkyrur powers. One of the most brilliant conquerors in the Empire's history, Maximilian is driven by the desire to control all he sees and make certain his late mother is honored forever.
General Radi Jaeger is a member of Prince Maximillian's Drei Stern and a fearsome opponent for Squad 7. Arming his Lupus tank with a mortar and special plating to cover its weak spot, he proves to be one of the game's most difficult boss fights. Jaeger fights for The Empire in exchange for his home Kingdom of Fhirald being liberated. Polite and amicable, Jaeger voices his disapproval towards Maximillian telling Selvaria to use the suicidal Final Flame after she fails him. After being defeated by Squad 7, Jaeger realizes that he's no better than the people who took his home from him and leaves the war effort, seeking a less malicious way of freeing Fhirald.
Misaimed Fandom: Valkyria Chronicles is a Diesel Punk fantasy with elements of Medieval European Fantasy. Some people nonetheless complain about certain aspects of the setting, like imperial soldiers dressed like knights, rocket launchers shaped like jousting lances, or the empire having some extremely large tanks, as not being realistic, even though these are stylistic decisions that are not intended to be realistic.
Moral Event Horizon: The Big Bad Maximilian crosses this after deciding that Selvaria isn't of any use to him anymore, telling her to use the Suicide Attack Valkyria's Flame while tying her to her own words that "she'll do anything for him". Knowing he is nothing less than The Chessmaster, it's obvious that he does this despite knowing Selvaria's serving him out of love, which is why even after his sad backstory is brought up in the final showdown, it's nearly impossible to forgive him.
Narm: Cherry is a valley girl fighting in the military. She's a vastly entertaining character, but even her death quote is amusing:
"Ugh... So lame... I'm like... Totally... Dying here..."
Play the Game, Skip the Story: There's unanimous praise given to the gameplay, but the story is much more contentious, largely due to several Broken Aesops, characters coming off as Unintentionally Sympathetic (Selvaria and Faldio) or Unintentionally Unsympathetic (the Gallian army post-Alicia's awakening) and a general belief that the writers bit off more than they could chew. A lot of players advise new players or people interested in the game to play it thoroughly, but take the story with a grain of salt.
Isara's sudden death, and right as her and Rosie are reconciling the Darcsen issue.
There are two times the game tricks you into thinking Alicia may die. One is a chapter preview that shows Alicia in the crosshairs of a sniper rifle, which is especially notable because it comes shortly after the Plotline Death of Isara due to a sniper bullet. The second is when Alicia starts building up the nuke attack that Selvaria used to commit massively destructive suicide. Neither results in her death, but since similar situations did just recently kill others, it might have you worried.
Ron the Death Eater: Cezary gets this treatment a lot in fanfiction, with some particularly extreme examples having him turning traitor.
When positioning your units for a mission, the map you position your units on doesn't actually tell you anything helpful, such as the locations of ladders, enemy camps and visible enemy units. This can lead to you placing down your units, starting the mission, realizing you put units in locations where they're seriously in danger or of no use whatsoever, and having to reload to shift them around.
The grading system. Unlike, say, Devil May Cry, time is literally the only factor taken into account for scoring rather than finesse, and while the majority of the game favors speed the grading system in particular is extremely unforgiving of your turn count. It doesn't matter how many casualities you inflict, whether you're able to bring your entire squad through the battle without them receiving so much as a hangnail, or whether it was a bloodbath where your troops were slaughtered in droves on their way to the objective, the only thing that matters is how quickly you won. Most A rank walkthroughs for missions consist of buffing Alicia and sending her for a jog straight towards the objective, and in the opposite direction of fun, so that she can shove the soldiers out of it with a grenade and claim it before any time consuming combat occurs. Most new players are advised to ignore rank entirely rather than restructure their entire playstyle to fit its whims.
Scrappy Weapon: The enemy weapons you get off Aces tend to fit this trope early on, as the marginal increase in power compared to regular Gallian weaponry does not make up for the severe drop in both accuracy and range. While the rifles and machine guns improve to the point where they become viable options, captured sniper rifles consistently have less than half the range and accuracy of their counterparts, which eventually become capable of scoring long-range headshots with almost every shot. The exception is enemy flamethrowers, as they are generally more powerful than their Gallian tier equivalents.
Spiritual Licensee: The gameplay is based on Sakura Wars, another Sega property in which players take control of multiple units whose movement is determined by a decreasing gauge and whose combat performance can be altered by having a Commander issue them orders. This is helped by the fact the developers have worked on the previous series.
General Damon is Ambition is Evil personified; he happily sends Squad 7 on suicidal missions as a meat shield for his own soldiers just to pad his own win-loss ratio. This comes to a head when he captures Selvaria, swooping in after the battle is over to take credit, and has her pistol-whipped to knock her out. Welkin and Alicia act like this is just the most horrible thing ever, but Damon counters with a pretty solid piece of logic: she's a Valkyria. The only safe way to take her alive is to do it while she's unconscious and unable to use her magic powers. When she regains consciousness, she uses those powers to detonate a castle and destroy the entire army in very short order, proving him right.
Damon also utilizes chemical weapons in the second mission of Selvaria's DLC, which both sides point out is a violation of the laws and customs of war under an in-universe international treaty in an effort to make him look worse than the Imperial Villain Protagonists. But while the only argument he offers is that he won't let Gallia be conquered because of a piece of paper, it's worth noting that the Imperial army has spent the war up to that point wiping their butts with international law; in real life a demonstrated unwillingness to abide by international treaties is a reason to break them yourself. Besides, the weapon he uses is a nonlethal paralytic agent seemingly more akin to tear gas than mustard or sarin; Johann is able to easily treat it once he successfully gets close to Selvaria. And all of that's setting aside that, while he doesn't yet know she's a Valkyria, she is a one-woman army who just slaughtered half the map in the previous level; he's not exactly being paranoid or disproportionate trying to pin her down.
Faldio spends most of the game being punished for awakening Alicia's Valkyria powers because he cared more about military power than the free will of a Gallian citizen. But, as he points out, if he hadn't done it, there would be no Gallia to fight for because it would have been conquered via the otherwise-unstoppable military power of a Valkyria. Everything about his character arc revolves around him committing this terrible act and eventually dying to redeem himself because of how horrible it was, aligning with the War Is Hell themes of the story, except Gallia only survives the war because of what he did.
That One Boss: Selvaria the third (and final) time you face her. Most of her difficulty comes from the fact that she has a machine gun and will use up to three of her AP to ventilate any sucker in her tremendous field of vision (as in, she can attack the couple of exposed allies at your starting location far); and that she's a Scout (270° sight cone) with Ace Engineer evasion (if you aren't backstabbing her or proc Undodgeable Shot, she's almost certain to dodge). She's rather frail for a boss if she gets smoked (so she can't counter or see) or pinned between tanks (especially if the Shamrock is either Gatling or Flame), but good luck getting a tank all the way there to begin with.
"Chapter 4: Operation Cloudburst" is where the game explains medics and how to recover fallen teammates before they die, and for good reason, as this is the chapter where the game officially takes off the kid gloves. The entire map is swarming with tanks, and while most of them are parked right next to what are effectively Exploding Barrels, they're never enough to outright kill them. While the easy solution is to park a sniper on the sniper nest right next to the starting point, the player will quickly realize that leaving the sniper up there at the end of the Player Phase is suicide as every single tank turns and snipes them from all the way across the map. There are enemy Lancers and Snipers hidden in perches of their own that will quickly take out your units if you don't hide them, and the enemy party eventually calls in reinforcement, leaving the objective overrun with nearly a dozen units. Oh, and you only have half the normal number of turns to complete the mission.
In "Chapter 7: The Battle at Barious", it's easy to get killed if you don't know what's going to happen. You have to take down a giant tank which is only vulnerable at specific turns, has anti-personnel turrets that can quickly kill anybody who tries to get close, and can break walls with two powerful, invincible anti-tank turrets. The only way to defeat the anti-personnel turrets is to pop them off with Lancer fire, which is fairly inaccurate (and ammo-limited without Engineers to resupply) this early in the game. To win, you have to destroy the tank's radiators, which can be done by having a Lancer shoot it three times, though there is a more simple strategy that's not particularly obvious, save for the shape of the radiatorsnote They are shaped like containers. Chuck a grenade inside of them and they will be destroyed instantly. To top it all off, once you get close to beating him, Selvaria shows up for the first time to aid him. She cannot be harmed and if she targets any of your infantry, they are as good as dead. Better yet, she also comes in with a force of powerful soldiers (including the stage's Ace) who will run around and clean up if you're out of position.
"Chapter 11: Battle at the Marberry Shore." Your tanks are effectively taken out of commission as there's nowhere for them to go other than a single platform. Zaka, despite this being his debut mission, is effectively useless, while the Edelweiss is stuck launching smoke rounds all over the map to keep your party from getting eviscerated by gun platforms. Some of them can be destroyed, but most annoyingly the ones directly in front of the main base (and dangerously close to the closest optional base) are two indestructible turrets. And at the end is one of the most well-defended encampments in the game, guarded by a medium tank and heavy tank and, by the time you get there, about 5-6 elite troopers in the middle of a huge sandbag formation and all packing attack-debuffing guns. And just to rub salt in the wound, just after your barely-won, grueling victory, Isara is killed in a cutscene.
"Chapter 14: Showdown at Naggiar (2)" is essentially one big fat Bait-and-Switch. At first it is ridiculously easy; the player simply needs to capture an enemy base that is rather lightly defended by a few pillboxes, MGs, and one enemy shocktrooper. It also helps that Alicia has gained her Valkyria powers, becoming an invincible NPC who destroys the majority of the enemies on her own turn. However, the moment the base is captured, reinforcements arrive from opposite sides of the map, and they consist of many enemy soldiers and two strong tanks. The player also loses assistance from Valkyria Alicia, who passes out immediately after the base is captured. One of the key factors making the level difficult is the large size of the map, as it takes forever for units to reach their destinations, even moreso for your tanks and lancers. On top of that, the special tanks the enemy uses have an effect to set areas of the map on fire (most frequently the acquired base); and the enemy sends in many reinforcements every turn, which can quickly overwhelm your own soldiers.
"Chapter 17: Breaching Jaeger's Blockade", even if you know what's going to happen, you're under a lot of heavy tank fire and the enemy commander is incredibly strong.
The Outskirts of Bruhl on Normal and Easy mode is an effortless cakewalk that can A-ranked without even really trying. The Outskirts of Bruhl on Hard mode is a brutal kick in the teeth. Your entire team is flanked by four tanks, several Stormtroopers, and two heavy gatlings, all close enough to shred any infantry unit to pieces in seconds with interception fire as soon as you take control. Very, very meticulous planning is necessary just to survive the first round. Oddly enough, none of the future Hard mode maps are anywhere near as immediately unforgiving.
The Report Chapter "Flower of The Battlefield" takes place in a wide open battlefield with very little cover and a load of enemies. You are limited to 5 party members and can't use Alicia, who is the game's best character and a source of CP. While a good sniper can help take out some of the opposition, they can't destroy the tanks, which also have machine guns that deal heavy damage to approaching units. Finally, a good portion of the enemies are hiding and can easily sneak around you and take the base while you're occupied elsewhere.
Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Rosie and Largo may have their reasons for their behaviour in their Establishing Character Moment (disrespecting Welkin, being insubordinate to Alicia and harassing Isara) and they do grow out of it, but some fans find it difficult to overlook. Especially regarding Isara, since it's a 30-year-old man and an almost) 30-year-old woman picking a fight with a girl who's half their age.
With Largo, it's understandable that a veteran soldier would have reservations about taking orders from someone who he has reason to believe only got his rank through education and social status. However, Largo was offered promotion several times, but rejected the offer because he wanted to stay on the front lines. Saying you don't want something and then holding a grudge about someone else getting it can be seen as...well, childish...
In Rosie's case, self-righteously trying to justify her bigotry towards the Darcsen by talking about the Darcsen Calamity wins her no points, when it's discovered that the Darcsens were in fact the victims, not the instigators. Her personal reason for hating them is that her parents were killed in a fire cause by a racist mob who were targeting the Darcsens who lived next door to them. Yes, it is horrible that she lost her family, but it wasn't the Darcsens who killed them. It was the bigots. Put simply, Rosie's vendetta is based almost entirely on Victim-Blaming.
Values Dissonance: Welkin's insistence that using Valkyria as weapons of war is a step too far and even insisting that Alicia doesn't need to use her powers makes more sense if you think of them as the setting's equivalent to nuclear bombs, considering Japan's history with nukes. The Final Flame makes the comparison especially on-the-nose.
Vindicated by History: The game got little to no press during its initial PS3 release in 2008, although it gained a steady cult following due to its status as a Sleeper Hit and early title, often stated as one of the must-play titles on the system. By the time the PC rerelease on Steam came around in 2014, the game skyrocketed to the top spots of the Steam and Green Man Gaming sales boards, beating out other newer titles released in the same week (which includes Assassin's Creed: Unity and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare !). Sega even acknowledged that the success on PC was far beyond their expectations.
Visual Effects of Awesome: The entire game is rendered in a unique and colorful watercolor art-style. There are very few other games that render the entire game in such a style.
Alicia after she is revealed to be a Valkyria. The Gallian army starts actively avoiding her out of fear, causing her to suffer a Heroic BSoD and convince herself that she is nothing but a weapon.
Woolseyism: Dallas's idolization of Alicia is played towards a lesbian angle in the English release, to make the implication clear for a Western audience; in the original Japanese, it was less overt, but played all the traditional yuri tropes to the hilt. A slightly more plot-significant alteration is the properties of Alicia's favorite flower; in English it's described along the lines of being "strong", whereas in the Japanese it's described along the lines of being "beautiful." Whether this change reflects upon the character of Alicia is up to the player's judgment.
The anime (may) provide examples of:
Americans Hate Tingle: Ramal, an anime original character for the anime is not well liked in the West, but in Japan, he's very popular and was voted as one of the top ten characters in the anime. This might have to do with his crush on Isara. Too bad that went nowhere.
Anticlimax Boss: The OP makes it seem as if Alicia and Selvaria's eventual showdown will be dramatic, but it ends up being cruellylopsided. Selvaria gets ragdolled both times after the opening shots are fired, which causes Maximilian to turn his back on her, now that she was no longer of use to him.
Ass Pull: Alicia and Selvaria knew each other? Wait, was that orphanage then in the Empire or in Gallia? Why were they experimenting on her? If they knew she was a Valkyria, how did they find out? Where are the other children that were involved? Who were those scientists? Where are they now? How did Alicia forget about it until she fought Selvaria? What is going on here? Stop trying to write your own story, dammit! It wouldn't have been bad if they actually followed it through, but like with the revelation that the Darcsen Calamity was actually the Valkyria's fault, it was dropped and we never heard about it again.
Complete Monster: Major General Berthold Gregor, the eldest of Maximillian's Drei Stern, is the cruel master of the mining town Fouzen. A fanatical Imperial loyalist, Gregor strongly upholds his Empire's racist policies against the enslaved Darcsens of Fouzen, endorsing inhumane labor that leads to many deaths. When cornered by Squad 7 in the liberation of Fouzen, Gregor gives the Gallians an ultimatum: leave or he will kill every civilian there through artillery fire. When Commander Faldio refuses to concede, Gregor makes good on his threat, dying content knowing the Gallians have won with innocent blood on their hands.
Creator's Pet: Faldio gets dangerously close to this trope. When he first shows up, he was fine. Post Barious is where things really heat up.
Faldio is often referred to as 'Superman' for his ability to do no wrong at certain points in the anime. Probably to make his eventual fall that much more shocking.
Maximilian has been called 'Maxi-pad' by people who are familiar with the game, due to the fact that he seems to be a mama's boy and well, just look at Lelouch's profile.
Early on, the series itself was nicknamed 'Kana Goes To War' on account of Alicia's various goofy facial expressions.
Growing the Beard: The series takes a dramatic turn at the battle of Fouzen, to the point where the two halves of the anime look like two entire different series.
Romantic Plot Tumor: The love-triangle is one of the more reviled changes in the anime. So Faldio gets romantically interested in Alicia. Okay, fine, this might be interesting. Bringing it up during battle and other inappropriate situations... Why was this guy appointed as a squad leader?
And of course the canonical Alicia-Welkin relationship, while initially fine, can be enough to turn the bowels of many a viewer, as it drags through the entire series with nothing but angst to show for itself. And they wait till the very last episode to kiss. In light of this, Faldio's playboy attitude could actually be a relief.
The Scrappy: Susie Evans takes this up in the anime. Although she serves a larger role than in the game, acting as Alicia's childhood friend who is part of Bruhl's town watch with her, she typically doesn't do much besides cry, faint, or act like a clumsy ditz whenever she's on screen.
Faldio Landzaat was this to a number of viewers after the events of Barious. He would hog the spotlight so much that some fans wondered why Welkin was even there half the time during much of the show's Romantic Plot Tumor. Not to mention that he is forgiven from committing war crimes, takes credit when it's not deserved, and being a Handsome Lech 24/7 despite the fact that such a facet of his character was nothing more than a footnote in the game's own guide on him. Some have even accused Faldio of being a massive Creator's Pet in the anime because of all this.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Some of the people cared less about whether changes were actually done well or not, but simply that something played out differently from the game.
One of the most contentious examples would be Alicia's personality, with a lot of fans taking issue with how Alicia's personality changed from a mature and level-headed woman in the game to a generic Tsundere. Even her design makes her look younger in order to emphasise this.
Faldio's anime incarnation spends majority of his time on-screen flirting with Alicia in the middle of battle and taking risks on the field that would get him court-marshaled at best. The fact that his refusal to withdraw from Fouzen caused the Darcsen concentration camp to be blown up by Gregor does little to endear him to viewers.
Jaeger, while he is more obviously heroic than he was in the games, was also hit with a massive case of Adaptational Jerkass. Since Johann takes the role that he had in-game of being a passive spectator to Maximillian and Selvaria's abusive relationship, Jaeger's characterization had to be retooled accordingly to avoid repetition. So the anime had him make disparaging and snarky remarks in reaction to Maximillian's abusive antics and every time Selvaria's feelings for him manifested themselves. All while positing himself as wanting to help her, and styling his Stealth Insults as much-needed Tough Love. However, to the viewers, this new characterization makes him come across as an arrogant and sanctimonious Fair-Weather Friend who chooses not to intervene because he takes pleasure in Selvaria's misfortune.
The manga (may) contain examples of the following:
Crack Pairing: Fans went "Say What!?" when they learned that hardworking Darcsen Engineer Nadine was interested in Racist Sniper Cezary after the incident where she believed he saved her from an Imperial sniper.
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