I liked the prequels overall (despite their flaws), but I can say you're definitely not alone here. I have seen a lot of discourse online where the sequel trilogy made people appreciate that at least the prequels had a coherent creative vision behind them. Lucas made plenty of mistakes in realizing his vision, of course. But he had one. By contrast, the sequel trilogy is painful to watch because they feel like they were designed by a committee (and the difference in creative leads hurts a lot too). Episode 7 in particular feels like they consciously tried to make a by-the-numbers Star Wars which passed muster with focus groups, but it had no soul at all.