Everyone here says it's a good game that should have sold better.

I have to say I played the demo and found it boring, is it me? is it the demo? is it the game?

What's so cool about it that I missed?

maybe it's the genre and not the game.

It's most enjoyable squad based strategy ever since Ufo: Enemy Uknown ?

It´s you.

The demo is pretty limited in scope, compared to the whole game.
The story is quite good (there are a lot of story sequences), you have a big pile of soldiers (50-ish I think) that you can take in and out of your squad whenever you are out of combat. Each of these soldiers have unique traits you will want to exploit depending on the task at hand (night or day, city, forest, desert area etc.) and you will also be changing equipment to suit the fight at hand. A fight in the desert is more likely to benefit from long range weapons than a tight city fight.

The game makes you emotionally into the decisions you make too, because if a soldier dies in combat and you don't rescue them, they will be out of the game permanently. And most of the characters are both likeable and fledged out in a way where you can easily become emotionally attached to them.

It's really a lot of small things that come together and make this game something better. Every character is very well fledged out in terms of information on them, and their "potentials" (traits) reflect this very well.

The demo is quite shallow when compared to the full game, the story really feels like an addition to the gameplay, but you can entirely skip the story if you like and still have some great strategic gameplay.

If you are not into/remotely interested in turn based strategy games, then you will never like Valkyria Chronicles. However, if you do like them, then it brings new game play mechanic to the mix.

Most turn based strategy games you move a character once (maybe twice), and on a grid based playing field. Valkyria Chronicles allows you to choose a unit as many times as you like. However, you have limited amo for certain weapons and the distance they can travel diminishes each time. And rather than the grid based play, you can move freely in 3D space.

Not only does it have the new play style, it has awesome graphics, a good storyline, and overall it was executed very well.

I rate it right up there with Fire Emblem.

How fleshed out are the non-main characters? Out of those ~50 soldiers, is there a lot of faceless grunt types?

I've put off buying this game for a while because of the huge stack of unfinished games I have, but I think I'm about to breakdown and bite on it. I can't take it anymore.

Everyone of those 50 has personality of their own with their own strong and weak points and choince of friends with whom they work bit better.
Also all of them have own face, name and background story.

^ Thanks. Sounds great to me, buying it now. Bye bye, self-discipline!

It's the best turnbased strategy game since Advanced wars. The demo does suck though.