Thanks for your comments re: Acronis, EdP,
Whereas I've experienced countless challenges, using Acronis, I am still using it as my primary, OS-agnostic and virtualization-agnostic archive utility.
You're correct that I could use any number of file-level backup utilities (including Windows' own) to archive individual files within the VM.
Further wila notes that simply shutting down the vm and copying the VM's .vmdk files does accomplish a "perfect" copy of the VM's contents. I would also consider examining wila's own vimalin utility (https://www.vimalin.com) as a file-level archive utility, were that my objective.
For now, I really want to explore all avenues that might make my Acronis-within-VMware-guest-vm-archive-to-Host-Shared-Folder approach work.
...though I conceded that I've not yet found a path to do so.