All of the actual meat of Palpatine’s scheming is in Clones though. That’s where he starts a war by playing both sides, that’s where he starts getting inside Anakin’s head, that’s where he begins consolidating political power. Yes, the events of Sith are more dramatic and depending on your opinion more effectively realized, but it’s all just payoff for stuff that was set up in the previous movie.
Setup horribly you mean. Romance is the reason Anakin turns to the dark side, and I don’t think I need to tell you it was setup horribly in Clones. I think Palpatine bringing Anakin to the dark side and creating the frickn Empire is more important than orchestrating some war where we never really get to see any casualties. I mean Clones might work on paper, but it’s so horribly realized that I can’t even consider it better than ROTS even hypothetically. You know which prequel had the most wasted potential? The Phantom Menace. Why? Because it’s a Star Wars movie before A New Hope. Isn’t that exciting? Maybe we could see Anakin falling to the Dark Side or the Jedi in their prime! Instead we got… trade negotations. Wanna see someone who’s actually doing a good job of rewriting the prequels? Look up Dresden Codak’s Star Wars 1999, where everything after the Phantom Menace never happened. As of now, we’ve only gotten descriptions and concept art, but it looks great.