Did making the Naruto chars older hurt the series?

[Kraco]

Or if anyone thinks that his fight against Gaara wasn't a draw(where he couldn't even crawl anymore at the end) they're crazy.

I'm not denying I'm crazy, but technically speaking Naruto won that fight. Gaara's mission was to wreck havoc in Konoha, Naruto's mission was to stop Gaara. Now, what happened? Gaara was stopped and it was Naruto who stopped him. In the end we aren't talking about boxing matches here but ninja. No matter how you end up accomplishing the mission objective, as long as its fulfilled, you have done your work. It wasn't Naruto's mission to cleanly kill Gaara and then dance on his grave but to stop him.

[Yukimura]

I can't imagine some guy going "Oh, I defeated Orochimaru the other day." and his opponent: "Pff, your techniques are just his weakness, that's all. You're no match for me."

As much as it's annoying for ranking strengths I can see that happening easily. I saw Naruto vs Neji and Neji vs Kidomaru as a prime example. Naruto beat Neji fair and square by simply overpowering and out lasting him in a hand to hand fight. Neji had lots of chakra, but Naruto had more and kept fighting longer than Neji could. But if you put Naruto up against Kidomaru I can't imagine how he wouldn't just get caught by the webs and killed. Even if he managed to escape all the spider threads there wouldn't be much he could have done against those high-speed long ranged attacks Kidomaru used at the end.

As to Jiraiya he strikes me as a primarily close to mid-range fighter, and when Naruto goes Kyubii he seems to become godly at close range combat. It's not hard to imagine a multi tailed Naruto just being too fast and powerful for even Jiraiya to fully defend against if he was sparring with Naruto at close-mid range. But if someone like Diedara, who denies his enemies close range access, fought Kyubii Naruto he might stand a better chance than Jiraiya by the simple fact that Naruto would have more trouble getting to him.

[Buffalobiian]

Yeah, okay. Got nothing against that.

[XanBcoo]

But if you put Naruto up against Kidomaru I can't imagine how he wouldn't just get caught by the webs and killed. Even if he managed to escape all the spider threads there wouldn't be much he could have done against those high-speed long ranged attacks Kidomaru used at the end.

Wasn't Kidomaru basically tailor-made to beat Neji? I always thought Neji's win was impressive despite his weakness to long-range fighting.

What I'm saying is that's not the best example, since Kidomaru would have/should have trumped both of them. It was only Neji's deus-ex-machina ability to attack Kidomaru after being impaled that eventually won him that fight.