The Star Wars prequels are tripe.
They are cold, clinical, boring, poorly paced messes. They have none of the spirituality or humanity of the original films, despite Lucas' effort to make them "rhyme".
In my opinion, the two core problems with the prequels are as follows.
First: The Phantom Menace ruined the trilogy. And I do not mean because it is bad. It is in fact very bad, but it could have been brilliant and the trilogy would have failed.
The trilogy had to be about Anakin's rise and fall. It had to be about adult Anakin. Without the time for the story to grow, Anakin's fall is rushed. The core of the entire prequel can't be told well.
And the expanded universe ruined the movies. Again, that is not because the EU was bad. It had great stuff and idiotic stuff. But Lucas had to throw in some nods to the fans, and more importantly, Lucas could rely on spinoffs to tell his story.
Think about how much of the Clone Wars we even see in the prequels. Now compare that to how much to the Clone Wars are explored in games, novels, the Genndy Tartovsky series, the CGI series, etc. etc.
Lucas had become a businessman. He needed to give hooks to his other content. That made the three films bloated.