Lurking around r/anime I came across a fairly lengthy post explaining a users hate for Sword Art Online. I've always been interested in why there was so much hate toward the series with some just flat putting it at the bottom in a list of series in this season. I do know it is just opinions and there is no doubt that SAO has gotten worse from it first few episodes of actual physiological appeal, that being characters being stuck inside a virtual world; which did influence me in writing one of my blog posts, but I wouldn't say this series is bottom of the barrel.
With that said I do want to respond to the reddit post even if it probably wont get read by the OP. Also being a reddit lurker, I don't have an account and don't feel like making one, however I do like hearing about opposing view and it was pretty nice to read it despite the length. So lets get to responding to the points he/she made shall we.
About Kirito
The only character development of the series turned a realistic main character into a Mary Sue (you could say Marty Stu, but he's far from that manly, even Klein called him cute in the first episode). Kirito is portrayed perfect in every sense.
One of the points I can't really dispute because Kirito is fairly flat and a "superhuman" that doesn't seem to fail. The only "problem" he has is not being able to work that well with people and over emphasized trauma of his lose of the many female women and friends.
The only thing I would like bring up is the fact that I would consider him one of those shounen characters that is hyped as the bad ass hero in the series.
He's the strongest player, has a special skill like no one else, can kill a boss in one shot. He's so damn strong that even SAO. All this awesomeness in one character renders him terribly boring and stupidly overpowered. He never even did anything to achieve all these traits, besides playing in the beta and thus getting some advantage.
As far as the first arch goes, he wasn't the strongest. The guild leader of "Knights of Blood", Heathlcliff, pretty much beat him twice, first time being the duel and second being that sudden final boss battle. However, you could say Kirito won, since he came back miraculously in the end and got the finally blow, but Heathcliff was clearly stronger.
And about the "He never even did anything to achieve all these traits", he did train, but they don't show it all obviously. And that little edge of him having double swords was the only real advantage he had over all the other characters. So if most of the characters were to train as frequently, they would more than likely be as strong as Kirito.
About Asuna
...an individual, powerful and confident female who fights in one of the front-line guilds. But as soon as she befriends Kirito, she instantly turns into the perfet, obedient-but-playfully-tsundere waifu.
Asuna was pretty cautious toward Kirito when they first met and slowly became more open as they spent more time together. That seems like a pretty natural progression for two characters.
I'm not a big fan of Asuna, so this might be more of my opinion, she never seem like a "perfect waifu", the only quality she had for that would be high cooking level. And she wasn't obedient towards Kirito in any since, because she is the one that got Kirito to move outside his comfort zone and try to make friends inside the guild after he joined.
She's loving and caring and faithful, and cooks meals for our hero, and despite being a top player, she needs to be saved or fighted for again and again.
Asuna during the first arch never needed saving or being fought for, on the contrary, Kirito needed saving and Asuna came to his rescue. Resulting in her saving his life from the slash happy psycho, forgot his name.
More or less Asuna and Kirito were parters in crime that fought together as equals. It is a different story for Alfheim Online arch, but even then, episode 20 spoiler she escapes her cage and miss birdy is about to fly (into Kirito arms...).
Story Complaints
Player killing guilds? Yeah, there are murderes in real life too, and there is player-killing in online games, but did the writer seriously think that out of 10 000 players, there will be a good portion who goes around killing people for fun? Even in a situation like this? The lack of consequences would really be enough for people to start killing of each other? Player killers serve only as a plot device for Kirito to have some strange cases to investigate and save the day again.
In a situation with a lose of hope, like having no way out of this virtual world, I'm sure there could be people that loose their empathy for others and just kill people to feel something. And yet that type of ordeal was only a handful of episodes, so I would agree to it just being plot enhancing device.
Why are thousands of people playing a virtual reality game made basically by the same company that made SAO? There was a huge uproar when SAO turned out to be a death-game, why people chose to blindly trust games alike?
In the beginning of Alfheim Online, they stated that the new kind of head gear was safer to use and the previous incident of Sword Art Online wouldn't be something that was going to happening twice.
Concluding
The show has good graphics and catchy opening songs, but that alone isn't worthy of a 8.5something score. Am I left alone feeling this way about the anime? Are there people who share my opinions?
I'm no fan of scored reviews in general, but I indeed do not think SAO is something that deserves an 8.5. On the internet, when it comes to scores, I've observed that if it isn't 8 or high people think it is garbage. Which is exactly why I'm not a fan of score based review, just list what you like and dislike and have people decide if those things bother them enough to ignore the series.
For me SAO is pretty enjoyable for what it is despite the flaws I've conceded to in your post. Sword Art Online may have deviated from its major pull for me and indeed has a bit of hype toward it, but it is an entertaining fantasy world. A world where nerd minds run free into whatever pulled them in in the first place.
Nevertheless opinion being thrown around like it's no ones business, and that is just mine, if you want to read the full reddit post it is located here. Also, express you own opinion there on reddit or even in the comments below.