All the stuff that was in Part 1, the close combat, the intelligence, the tactics, it's in Part 2 as well. Part 2 has a much better plot and the character development can't even be compared between the two. The characters in Part 2 are better. The power is better, the animation is better. As a whole, Part 2 shits on Part 1.
Where did you study narrative structure? Because everything you mentioned you think you know it is actually better in part one (with the exception of animation, I give you that that is better in part 2, but that is to be expected as technology marches on).
Let's just look at Sasuke for a single example: his entire journey through part one was well constructed and made sense. In part two Kishimoto has only made him do whatever he needed him to do to advance the plot, flip-flopping all over the place.
Just to be safe, now Naruto: since the Pain arc he stopped being a character and became little more than a force of nature and righteousness.
To put it simply: the first part was character driven, the second part is plot driven. Methinks Kishimoto can do the first type of stories better. There's absolutely no character development in part 2, you can look at all the characters and how they were at the beginning... They are exactly the same people now. Except for Sasuke who is, like I mentioned, a wildcard, his character development wasn't character development, it was character pinwheel.
Now the battles: saying that intelligence, tactics and analysis still exist in part two might or might not be true. The problem is that those aspects of the battles are irrelevant now since no matter how good of a tactician any character is, with the amount of DBZ-scale bs that Kishimoto has piled up it all comes down in who can perform the most flashy and big technique.
The point in which the battles became like that can be pinpointed at a single even, actually: the introduction of Susanoo (take Susanoo away and Sasuke vs Itachi would actually be my favorite battle in the series as it was, except for that Deus ex Machina, the last old-school battle in Naruto, but alas). All went downhill from there.
No such thing in the first part, since those techniques were rare, made sense and weren't actually as game-breaking anyways.
This is why I hope all the tailed beasts sacrifice themselves, the hokage go back to the afterlife and Sasuke loses his mangekyo sharingan so that the final battle is just Sage Naruto vs basic Sharingan Sasuke trying to outsmart and outlast the other.