Characters: A new character season 2 adds is Sinon and honestly I think I may love her more than I love Asuna. Asuna and Kirito are still my all-time favorite anime couple, but if I compare Sinon and Asuna as stand-alone characters I love Sinon a little bit more than Asuna. Why? First, I think if Sinon and Asuna ever got into a fight, Sinon would win. Second, I really like how serious and focused Sinon is, she really doesn’t show much emotion which I think makes her even cooler. Plus, after Kirito and Sinon team up, Sinon discovers that her and Kirito actually have a lot in common and are both trying to live knowing they did horrible things to survive.
Death Gun, the new villain for season 2, is also awesome. I love how he kills people by appearing out of nowhere, shooting somebody, and then disappearing; it’s really ominous and creepy like you never know who he’s going to kill next. I was disappointed that I figured out who Death Gun really was before the show revealed it, but it was still cool watching Kirito play detective again while trying to solve the mystery.
Story: The fight scenes really get better in season 2 because in GGO players fight with guns and grenades and almost all the action in season 2 is players fighting other players which is awesome. It adds bigger variety of fighting styles too because now there are snipers like Sinon, machine gun using power players, and silent assassins like Death Gun. Also, while SAO and ALO were both fantasy games, GGO is much darker and edgier like one of the battlefields in the game was this abandoned city with graffiti and rusty cars
However, I do kind of miss how in the original SAO players were trapped in the game and developed their own little lives inside the game, but now players can log out anytime so the mood of a most of the side characters is a lot less serious. Although, I guess they make up for because season 2 we get too Kirito and Asuna lives in the real world and I was actually pretty surprised to learn how hard Asuna has it with her family.
There are 2 more story arcs after the Death Gun story arc which take place in ALO, but they aren’t quite as good as Death Gun.
Overall: If you liked the season one of SAO, you have to watch season two.
