I have some nostalgia towards the first season of Sword Art Online, since it was the first ever anime I watched. I didn't know anything about anime yet so I was very entertained for most of the FIRST HALF. But I can look past nostalgia and rate it fairly based on what it has potential in and what it fails to do. Is it wasted potential of a premise? Yes, in every regard of the term. The characters are reduced to flat and boring architypes, the pacing feels awkward with trying to fit the entire story within 15ish episodes. But with what we get for most of Aincrad, it was well spent. The story driven episodes felt their appropriate tone and weight, characters acted accordingly to their situation. When there's a mystery, it's engaging and presents concepts that would be terrifying or heart wrenching with the setting of a video game.

Just about every fight felt thrilling and exciting, stakes through the roof, I find myself always invested in the purpose behind every fight. Whether it be a milestone, out of the characters' favor, to achieve something, or be a pivotal character moment. Sword Art Online always keeps these engaging to sit through and usually gives a purpose to the conflict.
Sword Art Online really does start out as a great idea with seemingly plans to execute on it. Unfortunately, the story turns from an interesting premise to a male power fantasy at the snap of your fingers. With such an interesting world and creatures inhabiting it, Sword Art Online could have been something that was remembered fondly by all audiences instead of being the divisive series it is today. What follows is side character driven episodes to fill the stereotypical roles of a harem. Albeit SAO is not a harem, there's a clear romantic relationship, but the time dedicated to these characters feels wasted and adds nothing more than to create a side character that exists in the story for audiences to latch onto.
The only really solid factors that Sword Art Online has going for it is its very consistently good animation, its interesting world with great monster designs, and its beautiful soundtrack. Yuki Kajiura did a fantastic job setting the tone and making a very memorable Original Soundtrack for Sword Art Online. Unfortunately Sword Art Online is only half about Sword Art Online in this first season. You see, moving on to the SECOND HALF of the season, we have Alfheim Online.
Alfheim is horrible disgusting garbage. The pacing is slow, there is heavy hints of incest as well as blatant tentacles, and uncomfortably large amounts of rape and sexual assaulting. Sword Art Online spends half its runtime in this arc, and it goes to show just how easily greater the overall show could have been if they had used these episodes to further improve upon Sword Art Online's first half. Unfortunately this is what we have, and its best remembered for only the first half. I choose not to think it's canonical since the entire arc is pointless if you change one crucial detail which SPOILERS AHEAD is that if Asuna wakes up at the end of SAO this never happens, period. If I'm not including the second half then this is a 56, I'm not letting nostalgia effect this rating. Including Alfheim with the first half, this is a 17.
Take this review with a grain of salt, as the only part that really matters that you watch is the first half as nothing comes out of the second half besides more power fantasy bullshit filled with so many horrible kinks that watching the full show is more of an endurance test than entertainment. I don't want to go anymore in depth with Alfheim. So to balance my rating, I still would say that I don't recommend watching Sword Art Online, unless you like to watch things with wasted potential.