The space battle at the end does feel like old school Star Wars though.
You mean the part where the 5 year old takes out an entire armada of ships with his nifty spinning trick? It’s a juvenile film that would be tolerable as a juvenile film without Jar Jar and the Gungans. Those guys just make it entirely unwatchable.
In all other respects though, TPM is superior to the other two prequels imo.
Old school in that it’s physical models and explosions. It’s only been fairly recently that CGI ships made me think I was looking at a real vehicle with weight to it. There’s one stardestroyer shot in the Rogue One trailer that had me believing the original model had been used.
JEDIT: I had to dig back through nearly 30 pages to even find my original post on that! 😉