Sword Art Online isn’t even that good, from what I hear. Log Horizon is a better virtual reality isekai as far as I can tell.
SAO’s main point is to have people take VR seriously. The author touched on it in his previous series (Accelworld), but it didn’t resonate as much, so he kinda repackaged it to reach the same conclusion after 4+ arcs of novels/ anime.
Log Horizon feels to me less about VR and more like a sheer isekai, not unlike the many “I reincarnated into this dating sim as the villainess” kind of series we are getting in troves now.
Log Horizon is more about the MMORPG genre, with scenes that are basically like deconstructed WoW battles, or subverting mechanics present in MMO games.
SAO is pretty fast and goes straight into it (each anime seasons adds 2 to 3 potential members to the harem). Log Horizon takes more time but still ends with a bunch of potential love interests and dedicated eps to these relationships.
I still personally enjoy Log Horizon more for the group dynamics and the main character spending time to raise a guild instead of playing the lone wolf adventurer.
Hoping we get more series where the protagonist get in and out of the VR worlds, to have a more liminal kind of space.
Was that what .hack was about? Or perhaps that was an MMORPG that was depicted as VR-like, for the visual drama.
As with the SAO books the focus soon goes from VR to AI/AGI.