To people like me, whom (I think I’m using whom right, I never mastered that) TFA and R1 failed to even moderately entertain, saying ROTS is better isn’t saying very much. Not sure if that’s part of John Doom’s reasoning. TFA and R1 are above the prequels in my ranking, but not by much.
It’s hard to explain my reasons in just a few words. I do think ROTS is a more entertaining movie than R1 and TFA, but not in a “full action packed blockbuster” way, but mostly because it seems to care more about its characters, its plot and subtexts. Despite Lucas’s well-known cold writing, ROTS has some of the most moving scenes of the whole saga. It works to me because, even though not everything was well executed, it was done for a purpose and under one vision: Anakin becames slowly aware of being corrupted, until he loses his very own identity.
In comparison, I think R1 and especially TFA lack proper visions and subtexts: in these movies, it’s all about the scenes, but most of them feel somehow formulaic and disjointed from the others, seem to lack a coherent purpose, which makes them look less interesting to me, emotionless, even boring in some cases. I’d like to tell more about this topic, but I’d need to write a very long wall of text 😄 I would if asked, though.
Of course there are a lot of things I dislike in ROTS as a Star Wars movie, like all those continuity issues and Palpatine used as a comic relief in some scenes, but I do think it is, overall, still a better movie on its own than both R1 and TFA, though not by much. It’s not a masterpiece, in any case 😄 , but it’s the one I keep watching occasionally, while I just can’t watch again TFA (R1 I can’t say, since I just saw it yesterday 😄 ).
One last thing: I’m definitely not a fan of CG, but when comparing the PT to the new Disney movies, I think it’s useless to bring up the CGI issue, because they all used quite a lot of digital effects (despite the marketing saying otherwise) and they both look CG, no matter what. The only difference is that the PT’s CG is older.