Thank you for this post, I wholly support what you're saying. I haven't made it to where you are yet, so I can only speak on the lower levels.

Some of the exams like 257, 259, 299, 320 are absolutely ridiculous. Definitely agree on recommended power and having the ninjas that could pass the exams given their talents and what not. Though we meet these requirements, on some of these there are so many retreat conditions, it makes the exam impossible if you keep running into these retreat conditions. Sometimes we have to retreat like 500 times before we get the exam to become possible to beat.

299, for example has all the God-mode Akatsuki hitting you with super-crits before you even get started. You can be wiped out before your p1 even has a chance to mystery, let alone perform a standard. Yes, there are tricks to the exams, but figuring that out exposes even bigger problems. Same example 299, you c*e Fu or Danzo, but you'd also have to remove your headband equipment on the other two ninjas so Hidan doesn't kill these key people before they've done what they need to do. In other exams, the player must rearrange their treasure tools so that certain positions like 3 and 4 go before the exam's team. Players aren't going to know these things unless they've done certain exams like hundreds of times and realize what the patterns are and how to beat the exam with trickery or equipment manipulation. As shallow as this game is, I don't believe certain exams were meant to be figured out this way. These exams are simply broken.

Ninja exams are good puzzles to figure out. Either some are broken to keep people from advancing on purpose or they weren't tested properly to begin with and here we are stuck with them. Leaving the broke exams in game as is, doesn't help in creating good puzzles, it's just irritating for no good reason.