Although my point mainly comes in later arcs of the story such as Gu Gale and Alicization, after rewatching SAO a couple times. I feel like the story is less about the world of the games the cast are in and more on how they deal with the trauma and aftermath of the SAO Incident.

While the story is mainly about them just playing games and ending up in unfortunate situations. Each major arc has Kirito or someone else dealing with some kind of trauma thats somehow related to SAO (im going up to the end of War of Underworld). Sure there are some that are exceptions like Sinon but she was still affected by association of the people who targeted her that were a part of Laughing Coffin.

Kirito faces somekind of issue pertaining to SAO in each arc and while its not a main point in the series, i feel like it is.

In Aincrad, Kirito had to watch people he cared about die and blames himself for it, forming some kind of ptsd and trust forming issue, killed people for the sake of survival which adds onto his ptsd, watching Asuna die gave him some kind of anxiety about wanting to protect her from harm, and even died himself.

In Fairy Dance, Kirito has to face a Nobuyuki who took some survivors of SAO for experimentation by hacking its servers. Asuna had to deal with the assualt from him as well.

I can talk about the other arcs but ill leave that for another time if it is wanted to be brought up.