Good review.

I like to break SAO's first 2 seasons into 4 arcs. To me the first half of the first season where they are actually in SAO is near perfection. Some of my favorite anime ever. The only real problem is that it progresses way too fast. That world deserved more exploration. The entire series is based off this and we got half a season where they jump 10 levels an episode... kind of a shame.

The second half kind of devolves into a cliche save the princess kind of thing which was done fairly well but just didn't have the same greatness as the actual SAO parts.

Phantom Bullet IMO kind of brought it back a little. It was not near as good as SAO but a new way to die ingame and the introduction of Sinon as well as a different (sci-fi) setting was all pretty cool.

The second half, back in Alfhiem was again... good but not as good as previous stuff. I felt like a lot of stuff was being forced in at this point. But it was a fun wind down of action and dealt with a good personal story with Yukki.

Oridinal Scale was pretty awesome though. I think it is the best up to this point next to the original first SAO part. I liked that it brought back the importance of Asuna and gave a real world challenge. It also put Kirito in a tougher spot that he had to actually work through (though he managed to do so a bit too easy probably haha.) As well as all the fun references to previous content... this one was pretty enjoyable.

Gun Gale Online was okay... without the main characters I didn't expect a ton so not too much to say.

Haven't watched anything after that yet. But will eventually.

I kind of just wish instead of moving into other worlds and all that, they'd have just went back into SAO timeline and showed what happened in those large gaps... I think that would have been way more interesting than anything else they've done.