I started the manga because it began as an apparent hero's tale. It started off as the story of a boy who refused to accept his place in the world, and refused to accept the world as it is. That what's right is right and what's wrong is wrong. This is made abundantly clear in the Land of Waves arc.
However due to the popularity of certain characters the story started to evolve from that hero's tale to one of acceptance and settling. Naruto started off showing our hero to be someone who endured all that life threw at him, but still standing ready to fight back no matter what. Refusing to accept fate, the evils of the shinobi world or giving up on the girl he loved no matter how often he got rejected. His story was supposed to be about how he becomes a great man who makes the world a better place by continuously fighting for it. But that just never came to fruition.
Instead we were left with a protagonist who accepts things as they are more often than not. He accepts fate and becomes the child of prophecy. He accepts the evils that men do so long as they say they're sorry and have a sob story in their background. And he settles for some other girl that he doesn't really have a strong bond with just because he was shown memories of her loving him, usually from afar. But most infuriating, he becomes Hokage and that's it. He rests on his laurels and only concentrates on expanding his village and continuing the ninja line as it has always been. He's never shown initiating any real change in the world.
This was all done so the most popular characters (both author's personal favorites and fans') are able to achieve their acceptance in the story. Most importantly Sasuke's redemption without consequences and Hinata getting the guy she's always wanted. Which then allows for the franchise to get milked by creating a next generation.
This is what bothered me more than any other thing about the manga. In the end the moral of the story we were left with is to just accept it. And that moral seems to be continuing in everything that's been released since the original story's end.
To me, the story ended after the Pain arc. Up until that point the story of Naruto was cohesive, had goals and was steadily checking those off in the typical 'hero's journey' way. He had defeated the Big Bad (Pain), been acknowledged by the village and his main love interest, and now all he had to save Sasuke.
Again, plugging into the hero's journey formula, this would have been a task the Naruto and Naruto alone had to do. So the final lost arc of this story of Naruto would have been a second "Save Sasuke Arc," taken on by Naruto alone. And that struggle/battle/resolution would have mirrored the end of the Part 1, with the 'Save Sasuke Arc' where the all the rookies battled to save him.
(And keeping with the hero's journey formula, Naruto would succeed where the whole group failed because he alone had the mystical 'child of prophecy' power needed to save Sasuke, which would of course be revealed in the final struggle when it kicked into gear to save Naruto and change Sasuke's heart at the last minute.)
In the lost arc, the last overarching plot point of saving Sasuke would have been resolved. Then the story would have been finished, all goals met.
But unfortunately, they opted to drag the series out for 5+ more years, making bags of money, and unraveled the entire story. While I don't like Sasuke or Hinata, I don't think the story was continued just for those characters. (Although it might have been a secondary goal for some staff members). I think the people over Kishimoto's head offered him a deal he couldn't refuse: extending his contract and dragging out the story.
After that, for me, there is just simply no more story. EVERYTHING is filler arc after filler arc, waiting until the end. There is no more plot. Only needless battles and rivalry, punctuated by Sasuke looking cool and Hinata being sappy. Naruto, as a story, simply ceases to exist.
And it's crazy because I can't even argue plot points or where things went wrong. There was no effort made to continue anything even remotely like a plot for Naruto. I suppose there was some effort made with Sasuke and the Uchiha characters and backgrounds, but even those are largely unresolved. But it's not like we're looking comparing a 'Naruto' half of the story with a 'Sasuke' half. Most of the Uchiha moments turned out to be mostly filler as well, leading to the last battle with Naruto and Sasuke feeling just tacked on at the end.
My takeaway from the manga, looking back on it after time has passed, is that there was a clear, cohesive, enjoyable story through the Pain Arc. And then it stopped. And the fragmented mess of Part 2 doesn't even resemble a story. Just weekly installments that we were led to believe were going somewhere. But in the end, the only place it went was to lead us farther and farther away from what the original story was about.
I guessed they hoped they could capture the fans in a never-ending loop of loosely resolved stories featuring less and less compelling characters. Well, I don't think that strategy is working out too well for them. For me, the story ended with the Pain arc. The rest is just a money grab.