I came upon this novel by a chance and fell in love right away, the main reason being that I'm a gamer and have wished for virtual reality games for a long time. The romance aspect of a single pairing with no interference of a harem was also very attractive to me.

With that said, I read through the first 2 volumes at an astonishing rate and absolutely loved it. I like loner characters like Kirito and when he later finally got together with Asuna I was delighted, the getting together part was a bit hurried I think, but overall it was an awesome novel.

After reading the first two volumes I was curious what happened to Asuna so I continued reading. I was shocked by how much the main character changed from the first arc, it's obvious he would change after his experiences in SAO, but not this much - an introverted, gloomy loner became a cheerful and carefree playboy.
Another disappointment came with the introduction of a new heroine madly in love with Kirito and the first hint of a possibility of a harem, but because of the situation Asuna found herself in he didn't pay any attention to it so it was still ok.

With a lot of skepticism, hoping it would improve, I moved on to GGO arc. How great was my disappointment when I found out Kirito not only further developed his horrible character from ALO (with the hint of a brat and a crybaby) but also became a womanizer with a "soft spot for beauties" as the author himself describes. After finishing half of this arc I decided to stop reading this novel for good.

As a final verdict I have to say that this novel should have ended with the first arc and it would absolutely deserve a rating higher than 9/10, the way it is now however I'm so disappointed with it that I won't even rate it.