I haven't actually that many Naruto games but I am aware that quite a few of them have some form of a competitive background on them. HOWEVER... but in a lot of cases many licensed based anime fighting games tend to turn out to be... just anime simulators with some some odd creative choices at beast.
I haven't played a game where neutral jumps are that good since Alpha 3. Double neutral jumping and air chakra dash is how you punish most stuff in Naruto. Other than that, chakra dash canceling is how you punish subs and projectile assists.
There are inevitably going to be a lot of exceptions though. There is Dragon Ball FighterZ. Among a few others. As far as Naruto games are concerned, I heard that a few of the older 3D titles played a bit close to Tekken...
Just type in "Naruto storm grand finals" and you'll find lots of videos of high level play. As for character selection, the best characters in those games either have attack strings that can't be jumped out of and fuck u up on even on block.
Or said character has keep away so strong that options against it are limited or non existent in certain matchups. That's why games of this ilk kinda crumble at high level, but they're still super fun
Seriously though, fuck the dash cancels for basically destroying the entire game. I pretty much lost interest because it beats out fucking EVERYTHING. I loved storm 1 and 2, but i couldn't take PVP seriously after the introduced the yellow dash because it just shuts the entire game down.
I did notice Reach and Range seems to be very important.
The characters that fight with long reaching Weapons can punish stuff after Substitution that characters that Fight with their Barehands can't.... unless they have a good Tilt Move.
Edit: Which might explain why Madara and his long reaching Susano is more Reliable.
Although THAT BEING SAID, i always mained Kankuro and Fuu. Both of whom are VERY GOOD. Former for his tilt move, poisons and range, latter for her awakening being the BEST Beast mode in the series.
if ninja storm is giving you trouble, try Estival versus, it's multiplayer can best be described as super casual naruto ninja storm with a lot more boobs and butts. i can't think of a single video game that couldn't be improved with a higher quantity of boobs and butts