[Klashikari]

There we go... *sigh*, well it was a sinking ship right from the get go, and surely nothing is surprising, although it still leave me a very bad aftertaste that the author had to use such ploy to bring drama that shouldn't be brought to be begin with.

Really, Suguha as a character isn't really a problem (I actually prefer her over Asuna), and the fact she doesn't get Kazuto's romantic attention isn't an issue either.
Simply, having her dragged in the love equation, using the generic "non blood related sister" device, and wrecking the character twice in a row doesn't bode too well: not only it basically reduces the said character into an one sided romantic foil that had no chance to begin with, but it also tries to stuff drama that not only has little substance in term of narrative, but hurts the momentum big time.

Really, it isn't like Kawahara needed to pull the romance over there, and so forth, he could potentially just put more emphasis on Kazuto's quest of "freeing" Asuna. Heck, even Suguha could be used as a real sister who discovers her brother's devotion to maximum extent. But instead, we got a sledgehammer double one sided triangle that literally lead to an unsighlty "look, she had no chance, and now she is crushed!" scene. In fact, the author had to go with the "cruelest" way for her to discover, instead of... let's say Suguha barging in Kazuto's room and finding out the nervegear along with ALO. Truly, I still have little to no idea why it had to come for that kind of plot device.
And no, there was no need to add girls left and right to emphasis Kazuto's love for Asuna at all: having him pouring all his efforts to find clues for Asuna's whereabouts would be quite enough, pretty much a man on his mission (which hardly was shown once we got in ALO, until Yui found out Asuna's ID). Instead of having an extensive narrative on his desperate attempts to find her, they had to make him enjoy the game a bit, while pushing Leefa and other girls... That's flat out unecessary.

The fun fact is that as ALO Kirito, Kazuto figured out Leefa's feelings when she was about to confess, but for "some reason", he thinks Suguha is upset because he was wearing the nervgear once again.

Combining this with Sugou's parodic evilness, and surely ALO has little to no appealing aspect compared to SAO arc, save perhaps the sceneries and... "fanservice" for some. And speaking of fanservice, I can't help but notice emphasis on Leefa's "assets", albeit not as exaggerated as in Episode 20. Well, not like it wasn't the case over the course of this arc anyway.