Review of Sword Art Online the Movie: Ordinal Scale

I honestly can't decide if this film was great or just mediocre. Visually it was spectacular, with flawless and at times jaw-dropping animation and visual effects, which twinned with the film's amazing soundtrack made the action sequences highly immersive and win the film 'cool points'. The series also has a lot of very touching moments and some great character development which looks as though it should have a significant impact on the next upcoming series, especially since we see two main characters getting engaged at the end of the film. Another plus point is that despite being centred around video games, the plot does involvereal stakes that directly affect the characters' lives and relationships.
However, the film has a great many problems: The film's villain is a mad scientist who's trying to bring back his daughter as an artificial intelligence by stealing the memories of those who knew her in SAO and recreating her from that. In the story, he takes Asuna's memories of her time in SAO and of being married to Kirito. The issue is that instead of just targeting the SAO players with his brain scanning drones, he needlessly sets his drones to only take people's memories if they are defeated by giant monsters in game events. This is ridiculous; what kind of father would leave the prospect of saving his daughter up to the skills of video gamers at defeating monsters? He'd just suck their memories out anyway. And if their memories can be given back, as we see later on in the film, why does he even need to suck them out in the first place? And why on Earth does he plan to get all of the SAO players in one place at the concert for the climax in order to take all their memories at once if he already knows the school they attend? Why not just target the school instead of wasting an absurd amount of time, money, manpower and resources on a pointless idol concert? (with that said, both he and the other antagonist Eiji have very realistic and relatable motives and are by far the best villains in SAO despite their complete lack of common sense).
And you know how at the end of the Aincrad arc in the SAO series, Heathcliff revealed that he had always intended to become the final boss on Floor 100? Well, in this movie that gets totally retconned, since a giant female knight is revealed to have been the "true" final boss, in what can only be described as an enormous plot hole.
Kirito's personality has also completely disappeared in this movie, with his deep moral uncertainties discussed in SAO II being ignored altogether, in favour of a standard shonen "getting stronger to beat the bad guy and save the girl" mini-arc, and Kirito's coming across as rude at times, at one point driving off on his motorbike seemingly mid-conversation with Asuna and not even saying bye.
The pacing of the film is also all over the place, varying from fast and exciting to slow and dreary in the middle, often with nothing of significance happening in the slower parts of the film, which just focus on the female characters discussing pop idols.All of the supporting cast were wasted in this film, doing virtually nothing and being given no development or exploration. I also don't understand why the players of the Augmented Reality games aren't constantly bumping into non players or walking out into traffic. It also strikes me as I unrealistic that, if doctors are aware of large numbers of AU players losing their memories, this hasn't become a major health crisis and people weren't all warned about this. And since the villains knew the dead girl better than anyone else, why did they need every fragment of her from every SAO player's memories rather than just using their own memories?
Do those problems override the good? I don't really know. It has some amazing action and some really well written scenes, and it will evoke a strong emotional reaction from you... And it has almost everything I look for in a good movie... But it has a lot of problems too that almost make it hard to recommend. 5/10, watch if you're into SAO.