The best episodes were the ones when they were in SAO doing non-progression. I loved the comfy lakehouse, cooking, and blacksmithing episodes. The show could have kept going on like that, exploring the people who are usually considered to be NPCs but instead it went full shounen bullshit.
Kinda sad really. Kirito was probably the worst character of all time but if you ignore him for the most part the rest of the characters were okay. Then again, I liked the MMO theme and don't think any other show created the same urgency with which the beginning of the show felt. The fanbase couldn't be worse though.
Fun fact: there was a deep web leak of chat logs of a child sex slavery ring and there was a guy from the UK who used the name Kirito as his handle to try to buy a six year old girl. That's all you need to know about SAO.