Haha, Aika is way rad, yeah : p She manages to be tough and awesome and best of all interesting without having to be sexualized in any way whatsoever : p I am a huge Aika fan : p Shes also way tough, if you know how to use her, I use all my power ups on her, and though she never reaches Vyse levels of power, she can be tough : p Especially against multiple enemies, all of her special attacks are made for multiple enemie, and on top of that her moves use less SP than any other character, shes way good. (And she can even be a better magic user than Fina if you use your power ups on her)
And haha, well I liked Vyse though, he was like boyish, like always confident and encouraging to his friends and a good leader and whatever, but he wasnt like a big mean jerk too : p He was fun, I liked him.
And haha Im guessing the developers of Valkayria Chronicles didnt really know much about SoA : p Like they should have called the people who worked on SoA for help there : p THink it was just using a Sega franchise hoping to get more people to buy the game or something : p
And haha CMV just has a weird thing for old guys with side burns and beards : p
Aika really is high up there on your list for one of the best female heroines in video games which is true. It is hard to find a character like Aika, one game character that also reminds me of Aika and all the points you brought up is Heather from Silent Hill 3. Man even better than Fina, I actually never knew that. Might try it since I usually just have Fina as a magic user naturally. Vyse like Yuri from the tales of series are like that, your run of the hill happy go lucky but when it matters serious kind of guys.
It makes sense much like smash with certain characters. Sega probably just wanted to have cameos or so on characters from another part of their franchises that would have been widely known at the time. CMV they know how to pick their old guys hah.