User blog comment:FairyRaven/Fairy Tail Chapter 365: Fairy in the Jail!, Review and Commentary/@comment-2214433-20131231160035/@comment-4829046-20131231165248

I myself, while noting its flaws am biased since I love SAO so I can't really answer that for the most part, but most of the complaints come from those that haven't read the light novels. But its true that the novels have their flaws too, which is why Reki did a reboot. And yes as pointed out, Asuna was actually one of the primary reasons.

And actually the thing is that the novels change in genre. Its actually all romantic in the first half, afterwards, while it does contain harem romance elements, has a different flavour. Mother's Rosario for example is mainly tragedy and you will cry like a bitch(pardon my french) while Alicization arc is a mindfuck mixed in with extremely complicated themes and politics and overall has its own story-line separate to the story-line outside the game.