Yeah, if the comedy doesn't work for you, I can't really argue with your reaction. Agreed that 1-3 picks up considerably (1-2 is one of the weaker cases in the series IMO). A point of disagreement, though: I actually find PW's humour decidedly non-anime-like.
Anyway!
VPDS - B ending completed. Weirdly, the game just got easier and easier as it went along. Aside from the eternal annoyance of the snow map (lowering your movement in VPDS is extremely annoying, as well as non-threatening since being slowed isn't actually bad!), which was mitigated somewhat by Dash, I basically just steamrolled the rest of the game. Roiebourg or whatshisname deserves credit for one-rounding a PC through Defiance. Weirdly he has more ATK than the final bosses unscaled, and no, they don't seem to have anything that gives them more damage to make up for this. However he was dead easy to one-round, like almost everything else. Nothing in the game has more than 20k HP until the final bosses, and very little breaks 12k. The final bosses have 60k HP. I did 80% to the first (though she used First Aid to reduce this to 40%, this didn't prevent a two-rounding), and 90% to the second, while he failed to two-round back EVEN THOUGH HE GOT A SOUL CRUSH on one of the attacks (a second one would have done it!) and he died on the resulting counter. Defiance is stupidly game-breaking, but I don't enjoy the combat of the game enough to play the game without it. Also, second-to-last boss doesn't want that form in the DL ever. God, I think she 6HKOed or so, although I didn't see the Soul Crush, which I imagine raises her to 2HKO territory based on extrapolating the stats of the other endgame bosses I did see Soul Crushes from.
Major spoilers from here on!
Anyway, the B ending really drives home that Wyl is meant to be detestable. Taking up arms against the final boss of B route is... well. Neat idea, and I really, really, REALLY wish the game had writing, because it is truly a downfall of Shakespearean scope. Heck, that's VPDS for you. The plot concepts are Shakespeare, but the execution... the game is best compared to Macbeth, if Macbeth were reduced to half a dozen scenes each about two minutes long, and the script itself was written by an average high school English student (with better spelling/grammar <_<). It's a crying shame. Last scene of the ending was good, ties in with VP1 very elegantly.
4/10 game I think. Could change if the other routes wow me. I'll probably do A next? Despite the awful writing the concepts are good enough for me to want to check them out, and the game is pretty short. Dunno if I'll NG+ it or not. Probably not.
EDIT: Oh right. The party I used was Wyl (with Gleipnir's Bonds), Phiona, Lockswell, and Lieselotte. Mages are great in this game, using two seemed a no-brainer to keep the Reinforces and Sap spells coming. Wyl is forced, and Vali's Awakening is good enough to make you not feel bad about this. Phiona is pretty cool, greatswordsmen feel good in this game despite move/range concerns because base Strength matters way more than weapons and they have the Strength; she in particular was a good comboer and knocked out lots of gems, weird for a greatsword type.
EDIT2: Game was 13 hours long. Probably an overestimate, since I did spend some time with the game on while chatting on the internet. I did almost no optional stuff; just one and figured out they were basically a waste of time since the game hands you more than enough money as is.