I found Aikido to be hollow and actually kind of useless. Sure, they teach you how to hold a sword, and deflect attacks, and redirect energy given. Which several other martial arts do. However they never took it into a practical approach. The never broke down each kata (I forget the word they used at the moment for the grouping of movements for practice) and showed how you could take meta-movements and flow them together into a real-world application.
Perhaps this was just my school that I attended, but my choices were limited.