[@Dark Cloud] You'll hear contradictory things about the show and its spin-offs. But as someone who watched it, when it first came out. (Before everything had been overanalyzed into oblivion.) I quickly stopped watching around when the little girl was introduced. Because the pacing had already slowed to a crawl at that point. And the plot itself had become so obvious, that I stopped watching before most of the really bad stuff had even happened yet.

And honestly, there's so much better "mainstream appeal" anime that do the exact same thing as SAO. So if you need old or current anime recommendations, I can give you far better options.