Oh well, the episode was about what I expected. Completely sub-par.

This is another example of people having too high of expectations. The anime cuts down EVERYTHING, what made you think the fight wouldn’t have been cut down too? Especially since we saw how far the episode would go in the preview.

Stop thinking DEEN is magically make an episode that’s 10 times better than the previous ones. Because that’s not going to happen and every time you expect it to, you will face disappointment.

As for the things DEEN is cutting out, maybe Ryukishi07 will complain like he did for all the things that were cut out of Higurashi, which is why the second through fifth episodes of the anime adaptation of season 2 were created.

On a side note, I believe the anime’s quality in voice acting is gradually improving, almost akin to the Umineko Drama CDs they performed in.

Of course, if people continue to be disappointed by the anime for being unable to fulfill their astronomically high expectations, they can always turn to the Drama CDs. If they can find them. I could only find excerpts on YouTube, some set to images from the anime to allow viewers to see how it could have been and perhaps discourage them from watching the anime further.

Indeed, I encourage people to continue watching and expect absolutely nothing special from the anime. That way, the rate of disappointment will drop, leaving more room for people to be either impressed or unimpressed.

And for all of us you liked the long version of the battle better there is still the fan-made cg-interpretation of this scene on youtube :P (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW_2_LgvHMk)

At least they kept the talk between Battler and Virgilia intact. Otherwise this “We don’t get the story at all” of many Non-VN-readers would have never ended. ^^

I think what hurts this episode much more is indeed the direction of the rest after this battle like Aroduc said.
The exchange of music for the big meta-discussion really make it seem unimportant and boring. I really wonder why the change the game OST around so much. After all the music of the game was made for specify scenes….. FAIL INDEED…

Cutting all the talk of the parents about the riddle before Eva gets the idea how to solve it herself also seem like a big mistake. After all this riddle is made to be solve by the viewers and now they just cut the only clues in a long time how to solve it. -_-
This cutting of important clues really starts to add up. The missing part in EP2 tea party where Bern and Lambda comment how this game of Beato may work after all also were some much needed hints in the VN. The missing game end credit parting the main game and tea parties are another confusion element.

But I also found some funny discussion on animesuki where some people said how the 10t of gold seemed quite unimpressive and small until someone did the math and concluded that this stack of gold really is a realistic representation of 10t while the VN make it look much more awesome…. the anime depicting a scene more realistic then the VN… well … that new XD

Ah, well, I took some of your advice about action sequences and figured the fight wouldn’t be quite as good as the original beforehand. But it did end up satisfying me, particularly the rather interesting interpretation of some of the magical weapons and such.

2 very promising episodes, and now we get this. The most epic battle of this season watered down to 2 minutes of CG.