Pie its like you are pulling the gaming desires from my head (Please excuse my essay I haven't posted for far too long @_@)
I think you have perfectly captured the airy nature that Welkin displays in the animation. Definitely a game that I would recommend playing just for the sheer enjoyableness of the story and unique and interesting design.
Valkyria chronicles is actually one of the first games I got for my PS3 in 2010?. The reason this game first attracted me was pretty much the nice drawn/sketchy art feeling it had around the game kind of like Okami which I had on my wii. Needless to say I quickly drawn into the game with the beautiful artwork and music.
The game play was initially a bit annoying since I hadn't played a game like this before and there wasn't a tutorial. ( I didn't realize enemies could keep shooting you in your turn while you only could shoot them once ) However once I had mastered the controls I was completely addicted to the game. I don't know if I have OCD or something, but once I had zoomed through the main story line, I decided to find all those side story levels that gave insights into some of the characters and complete the game with a perfect score and without losing characters*.
Anyway, after I had played through the game and everything I was highly disappointed to find out that the later installments of the game were only available on PSP . Which I unfortunately did not have, anyway lately I have been wanting to play it again to the point I started to watch the anime. On the positive note there is still the DLC that is available for the game that I never got around to purchasing?
* This is probably the sole reason it takes me forever to complete each version of fire emblem unfortunately my stubborn desire to keep every single character alive XD