This series sucks you in with the premise of saving the unit from bankruptcy, but honestly that gets done remarkably quickly. It genuinely feels like it's done before the series is a quarter of the way done, and while the remainder of it all is a good series and well written, it's not really what I came here for. They also throw so many names of people, places and historical figures at you that it can make your head spin, and combined with them using made up or historical terms for weights and other things, it paints an accurate if overwhelming picture of the world aroundthem. The viking theme is on point, well executed, and from what I know relatively historically authentic, and each addition whether it be armour, or culture, or politics feels authentic to the historical culture it's representing, which must have taken quite a bit of effort to do and I commend that.

The story is good too, despite it really not being able un-bankrupting a mercenary company. It's more about the politics and expectations of being a mercenary company, and eventually evolves into national level politics in a relatively natural way. The character interactions are solid, and while they do feel a bit shallow at times you can tell there's more than what's just being shown here, letting them feel much more natural than they seem on the surface.

The concept of the otherworlders is well done, there's even others in the world you meet and it's fascinating to see the differences, however the concept ultimately feels half baked and used to justify the eventual ability to return home, which while I commend the series for having the guts go go that route, doesn't resolve well imho, and it feels like a plot point added in to get a cheap sappy ending moment.

The artstyle is also good, if a bit plain at times. There's lot of changing between what looks like 3D renders of things (particularly armour which can look a bit jarring) and things that are actually drawn. They have a tendency to give women prominent lower lips for some reason, and on Hilde especially it's jarring as she perpetually looks like she's gotten socked in the mouth, but that's really the only bugbear I have with the artstyle.

However the pacing is all over the shop. There's tense moments of interesting combat and fun scenes of advancing the corps technology and supply side, then LONG stretches of character and politics and worldbuilding where it feels like the plot never advances. And it's really fun, but when your series has 80 chapters and you're in the mid70s not having seen the climax moment let along the epilogue you kinda know they're going to pull something to justify the ending. And bullshit they did pull, with the climactic moment entirely undercut with a frankly BS moment and then they HARD cut to the ending scene without giving us any time to recover from the whiplash nor resolve the tension that's been building up.

What should have been covered in another 10ish chapters with proper depth is then summed up in less than half of one in a way that just feels utterly shameful to the story being told. Given the romance flags and varying tropes of series like this, you absolutely know they're going to pull one of two endings out of their hat, and while the ending they chose is well written and set up, it still feels cheap because we really should have had just a bit more time to round out the series than what we got.

Ultimately the fact that they resolve the central premise the series is named after and resolve the ending so damn fast takes major points away from what is otherwise a stellar series. This is one of those series you will recommend but with caveats and conditions. If it had an extra ten to fifteen chapters this would not have been so bad but that ending REALLY kills my enjoyment of the series as a whole.