VG+ already shipped my copy 3 days ago.
Valkyria Chronicles 2 is a vastly gimped, extremely grindy & horribly generic-school-animefied version of the VC formula, made for the inferior PSP hardware which caused a lot of limitations that the PS3 version doesn't have. So yes, VC1 is a lot better than VC2. Not that VC2 is total trash, but don't let its quality/style drive you away from VC1 (or VC3, if by some miracle it's ever released in English somehow), since there are some pretty big tonal & quality differences.