Board Thread:Naruto Discussions/@comment-31948035-20170717011649/@comment-5085906-20170717080650

He is regarded a genius in the sense that he's mastered several techniques at a young age. He can use both Sharingan and MS Sharingan in a very seamless manner that's not seen in a Uchiha (Sasuke has to quit everything he's doing just to put someone in a shitty genjutsu), he's exceptionally fast (he could use sleight of hand tricks with his shuriken whose speed Sasuke had to match up with scrolls) and he's supposedly a tactical genius, although as you said, most of his canon fights happened against opponents of lower caliber than him and in the case of Kabuto, Kishimoto decided to give him a deus ex machina jutsu in the form of Izanami.

Yes, his plans eventually crumbled down, but he was pretty close to realizing them considering how ambitious his gambit was. It relied on Sasuke killing Itachi, which he did. Then transplanting his eyes, which he did. The only thing he couldn't predict is Tobi being a dick and Kabuto using a mass edo tensei. Contrast that to Minato's gambit with the whole programming his chakra and his wife's chakra inside Naruto - that was cool, yes, but there was no way that would have failed.

Unfortunately, this spawns a few Itachi fanboys who genuinely believe that Itachi's faster than lightning, that Itachi's yata mirror can tank meteorites and that Itachi's 60 steps ahead of even the most prodigious of ninjas like Shisui, Minato, et cetera.