Okay, Hai to Gensou no Grimgar.
As far as I'm concerned, there are two good ways to handle this sort of premise. One is exemplified by .hack and LMS, in which the story orients around an MMO and people who play it, without any of the melodramatics of "OMG WERE TRAPED IN GAME AN IF YOU DIE IN GAME YOU DIE IRL". The other is what we see in Log Horizon, and now in Grimgar, where the players are in a real world which shares mechanics and content with a game & general MMO parlance. So good on them there.
The first episode started strong, but I was honestly rather worried when the middle 50% was basically nonstop fanservice. It closed on neutral feelings for me. I'll admit that it amused me to no end that the leader of the Thieves Guild was essentially named Barbarian (yeah, the etymological roots of "Barbara" is the same barbarbar). The second episode opened extremely strongly, stayed good, and peaked again at a climax which I'm sure anyone who watched it will remember, and then descended very smoothly through a cathartic release of the built-up tension without removing the worry about longer-term concerns.
Also? The art is fucking fantastic. Pretty much everything that isn't a character or an object being directly interacted with by a character is in this really tasteful, vibrant watercolor-ish hand-painted aesthetic. I'm not sure if it's literally hand-painted or electronic, but it looks very good. I'd recommend it on the art alone, but the plot is at least a decent rendition of this idea, the characters are distinct and memorable, and the fanservice is both relatively limited (they did the stereotypical "lech peeks on girls in bath and gets laid the fuck out" scene without showing even a hint of female flesh!) and admittedly pretty sexy when it does come up. It goes both ways at least a little as well; the guys have a couple shirtless-in-boxers scenes in their bedroom.
But yeah, that opening scene of episode two? That's how good early character development in something like this should look. The climax and wind-down of the same episode? That's how you build and release short-term tension in the immediate conflict while not allowing the audience to forget the stormclouds on the horizon.
I give it a perfect 5/7.