I'd heard mixed things about Victory going into it, from it being an underappreciated masterpiece to it being a complete disaster. Having now watched Victory, I now have mixed thoughts on it. Victory does have some strengths, does do some interesting things, but also has a lot of problems. How much you enjoy victory will depend on how much you like what it does well and how much you can forgive what it does poorly.

World and Aesthetics

Victory is the latest we go in the universal century (at least in anime form). Things have not gone well for humanity and the anime is full of great bits of world building to establish just how bleak the Earth sphere has become. Cities are in ruins, space is littered with the remnants of dead colonies, and everything just has this vibe of decay similar to some dying former industrial town if you scaled that up to an entire planet.

Early on especially, it also does a great job of making the league militaire feel like a scrappy resistance movement.

Mobile suits (and other machines)

The mobile suits took a bit to grow on me, but they did. I like how unorthodox they (mostly the zanscare suits) are. for the early zanscare suits their designers were obsessed with helicopters for some reason and it kinda works. However, that doesn't come close to the goofiness of the later tire focused mobile suits. I can't help but love them, they're so goofy yet played so straight.

Zanscare suits also have a very insecty feel. Especially the eyes.

Zanscare also has an obsession with motercycles, something that especially comes through with its ships. The designs are completely absurd, but the show takes them seriously.

If you don't like goofy suits, victory is probably not for you.

There is also the Angel Halo:

The League Militaire suits and the Gundams are also alright. I'm not normally a fan of the separating mobile suits, but they do actually use the separating a lot in combat so I can kinda forgive that.

(Some of) The characters

I did like most of the characters. Uso is our protagonist and I do like him although I think he can be a bit inconsistent sometimes. Uso is also on the higher end for suffering of Gundam protagonists, so if suffering builds character then Uso is certainly a strong character.

Most of the main cast are pretty good, some of them are a bit lacking in character or get shunted into the background after some point (or just die). Marbet, the old men, the shrike team, odelo and warren, etc.

There are also a lot of good minor characters. Highlights include a man who commits suicide immediately after learning he lost to a child and an old guy who throws fish at people.

Katejina could get her own category, she was definitely entertaining (spoilers):

The Zanscare characters are generally also entertaining, although most of them are completely insane. The biker couple, Tassilo, Faula, etc.

Maria was also somewhat interesting, although I'm not sure I agree with her being listed as a main character on anilist.

Victory Haro is shockingly useful and my favourite haro i've seen so far.

Chronicle was alright as a char clone. He did have a stupid mask though and kinda just drifted to the background for a lot of the latter half.

The action

Some of the action is good, very good even. However, a lot of the action (especially in the mid section of the show) gets repetitive and dull. A lot of suits flying at each other firing beams and missing with a lot of reused animations.

Honestly, I think the action is better in the earlier parts of the show. It tended to be a lot more creative.

Pacing

Victory is very long. It feels longer. The middle of the show needed to be cut down and the end given more time to breath. Honestly, just cutting down the middle would be enough. Something about the episode structures as well made the middle ~20 episodes feel a bit monotonous. My point is, that the show get's repetitive and a bit dull in the middle. It's strange because a lot of stuff technically happens, it's just all spaced out with no consequence action scenes where nobody dies and nothing changes.

This is the main weakness of Victory.

Some of the characters

Kagatie sort of becomes the main villain at some point and suddenly everyone knows who he is. It's actually bizarre, I swear he gets mentioned by name maybe once before everyone just starts name dropping him. He's not terrible as an antagonist, he just doesn't get much screen time to actually be an antagonist.

Shakti. I'm not entirely sure what they were doing with Shakti. She was too naive for the world she was in and became a little annoying in the latter half of the show. She also becomes a damsel in distress a few times to the point it becomes a bit repetitive.

I'm mentioning Chronicle again just to reiterate that his mask was stupid.

Victory is also just very weird. In my opinion that is a strength.

I head that Victory was peak Tomino being weird about women and I'm just going to leave this quote from the one of the episode opening narrator lines (in reference to surviving a battle the previous episode):

"However, that was only made possible because of Marbet's pregnancy. That's a factor that could end up controlling the battlefield...a factor that men know nothing of."

If you want to know how a characters pregnancy could end up controlling the battlefield then you'll have to watch victory.

Victory is an occasionally very weird show that tries a lot of things. If you really like Gundam and want to finish off the universal century, it's probably worth a watch. Otherwise, there are probably other mecha shows you could watch first as Victory is a long 51 episodes.