Naruto's Direction

[Uchiha Barles]

I don't feel the tactics portion of the show/manga really went anywhere. The power scale has been increasing as of late yes, but the fights have rarely been "My ultimate technique is stronger than your ultimate technique. Mine blows right through yours Kamehameha Kao-ken ^10 > distructodisk!" Sasuke vs. Deidara for example. Yes, Sasuke's sharingan gave him the edge in that fight, but he wasn't able to just outright kill deidara. In fact, he nearly died. Not to mention the information he got from the sharingan had to be interpreted. That was particularly important when Deidara filled the area with microbombs.

Then we had the fights of the leaf vs. Kakuzu and Hidan. All those fights were thoroughly tactical. Shikamaru gathered information on their abilities, analyzed them, and came up with counters, to the point that he was able to solo Hidan. Team Kakashi had problems with Kakuzu, but Kakashi was able to take out one of Kakuzu's hearts using stealth and his sharingan to analyze hidan's technique, and then using the knowledge he gained to use an appropriate technique to counter. That it happened to be his signature move is besides the point :-P. When Naruto came into the fight, sure, he had with him an endgame sort of jutsu, but it had to connect. He had to use his usual Narutricks to get the attack to land, and the tactics he used were sound.

I don't know if you follow the manga, but one of the best examples of the use of tactics was in Naruto's latest fight. Not knowing whether you read the manga or not, I won't spoil, even if this is open discussion section. But I was pretty satisfied at how the fight played out, except for assfuck ending. Overall, I think the fights are pretty good, and in some cases, actually improved from the original series.

edit: As far as character development, it's still happening. We still get back stories of characters who spend more than one episode/chapter with us. For the vast majority of the characters though, we've already had their back stories. Further development can only occur as the story progresses, in the present. For example, Shikamaru's growth, and the crap Naruto's currently wrestling with, and Sasuke becoming a hate obsessed, complete douchebag, etc.

Overall, I don't see the story lacking in anything except content and presentation...
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There's character development and decent fights, but everything for some reason just seems "meh" compared to the original. I think it has something to do with the fact that no one who matters, dies. In the rare cases (case?) they do, you see it coming from a mile away. In the original series, we were expecting a cruel world, were people died from the smallest, random-est of things. Back then, we didn't know our main characters or anyone close to them were immune to that fact. Now we do, and it's impacting the story.

edit 2: Replace "Hidan" with "Kakuzu" up there in one of those paragraphs, cuz that's what I meant to say.