The prequels had a good story told incredibly poorly
This is redeemable, fun to read about extra info on wookiepedia, and fun to rewatch in whole context of that good story.
while the sequels have a bad story but at least it is told well (or at least better)
This is not redeemable, adds nonsense and contradictions to wookiepedia, and why bother rewatching a bad story at all? But hey, at least the acting is good and special effects are pretty!...?
Ray tracing is not a fad though, and reducing it to just reflections is ignorant. Reflections, shadows, bounce lighting/global illumination, etc. all get noticeable bumps in quality. They are definitely more subtle than previous bumps from new techniques because those old techniques have gotten so damn good. But at the same time, those previous techniques have reached their limits and have unfixable problems. Whether that is occlusion artifacts in reflections, light leaking from global illumination, non-interactive baked lighting, shadows with uncanny resolution and no penumbra, hacky ambient occlusion, etc. etc... the problems are all minor, sure, but they are there, noticable, and devs want to keep pushing.
And this is ignoring the benefits on the dev side as well. No more annoying rasterized light placement. And pulling your hair out trying to hack the engine to get the look youre after. "It just works" is an unfortunate comment but holds a lot of truth. Even non realistic looking games will use more and more ray tracing as time goes on because of that. And eventually every device and card will have performance for a full suite of effects. Its an inevitability, not a fad.