Based on the chapter review thread, the majority actually seemed to be in favor of the twist with Madara. At first, I felt a littel disappointed by it, but all the same was still shocked and exilarated and upon rereading it, now believe it's much more realistic and unexpected than another ten chapters of Naruto and Sasuke exchanging blows with Madara. It reminds me of Julius Caesar when his men stabbed him in the back. It's not like we haven't seen what Madara can do. We've seen most of the Rinnegan techs by he and Nagato, he used that huge perfect susano'o to fight Hashirama, cleave mountains, control Kurama and utterly defeat all the kages. He also used Mokuton and the Rinnegan techs on another level in conjunction with his sharingan and became personal with several of the characters including Naruto, Sasuke, Obito, Tsunade, Hashirama, Tobirama and Onoki. He literally killed the two protagonists and succeeded in reviving the juubi and enacting Infinite Tsukuyomi. We saw the 8th gate thanks to him and learned the full story of the the Uchiha and Senju as well as the Ootsutsukis and the truth behind his manipulations and Rin's death. Now when he's finally succeeded in his goals and drunk and mad with victory, he finally lets his guard down and is proven he is not the supreme being, in knowledge, skills, ideals or power as was made in the very beginning of his character when he was continually defeated and resulted to stealing power rather than relying on his own to become stronger.
Obito I believe was done well for the most part. He really delivered as the juubi's jinchuriki and the sage's second coming with his powers, ideals and strategies. In the end, he was more rational than Madara, never fully trusted him, came off much more like Naruto and actually cared for the people and their ideals rather than belittling them. You could see he was being influenced by Naruto all the way back when Naruto defeated Kakuzu and Pein. I enjoyed he and Naruto's ideal clashes as well.
Kabuto's fight was epic, he became nearly insane himself and I enjoyed finally seeing his backstory, as well as witnessing his full intellect, powers and skills. Izanami was iffy for me, but it was symbolic of his character, changed him into helping Sasuke later and showed a weakness for Izanagi.
For other War arc characters, they weren't as fullfilling to me as the final antagonists. I was hoping for the Hanzo and seven swordsmen fights to be Akatsuki level and much more pivotal to the plot. The seven swordsmen are as legendary as the sannin, one was the original antagonist of the series, another was one of the strongest Akatsuki and Hanzo himself was the tyrant of Amegakure who fought with and named the Sannin but in the end was defeated by an old Samurai in like a chapter -_- lols.
The edo kages, Edo itachi and nagato and gold and silver brothers were much more enjoyable however, though like the seven swrodsmen, I wish the brothers had been more powerful and pivotal to the plot since they had Hagoromo's tools, pieces of Kurama, are descended from the Ootsusukis and are implied to have killed Tobirama. I believe Kishimoto may have been forced by his editors and publishers to cut some these characters and their fights short.
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