Echoes of Aincrad

I was so excited for the concept of this: being a random player in the first game in the Sword Art Online series, where if you die in the game, you die in real life. In SAO, the game is said to only end if players can beat the final boss at the top of Aincrad: the 100th floor. Unfortunately, they kind of squandered the setup ;( Pretty fun souls-like combat, but the game is soooo long for what it is and lacks much quest/enemy/challenge variety, and the combat alone isn't enough to carry the game, doing the same moves on the same groups of enemies and bosses for tens of hours with little narrative development or payoff. Really wanted to like this, but it's just not very good