First, an overview of the stories, based on my warped perceptions:
1. Datalore = An imperfect story (beaming with shields up, contractions galore, adults dumbed down to make Wesley look better), etc, it's the character of Lore that makes up for it all and - indeed - he is pretty solid for season 1 villain, topped by the acting of Lore by Brent Spiner is nothing ever less than phenomenal. Best of all, once Lore is let loose and kicking folks in the head and pummelling the strongest crewmember in some tightly directed scenes, you know the shizzle has sizzled on the fan and Lore is a palpable threat and immediate danger. The story's not perfect by any measure, but there's enough in the acting, execution, and incidental music to up the ante with and makes for a surprisingly entertaining watch. More than it arguably deserved to be at times what with some dialogue choices.
2. Brothers = An imperfect and surprisingly dreary story (adults letting children wander around in malls where trees in plain view bear fruit not healthy to humans and there's no adults to keep the pesky little kids away from nibbling), and apparently we have Pakleds to thank for saving Lore. Add in a command code override in Data to haul his hydraulic heiney home and there's a recipe for disaster. It gets worse as it's Data's creator (who still exists, of which Brent Spiner pulls off a THIRD character as a triple-role), but this is season 4 and they're already looking at season 1 characters to build upon no matter how contrived. Brent still excels regardless, but Lore doesn't feel like he's used much in this one.
3. Descent = A story with a point that descended into sheer inane dumbery the moment Lore appears, so at least the bulk of pt 1 was fairly decent and with potential. (Prior to this episode, regarding the Borg, we get Picard trying to pull a Kirk trope (nag a computer until it self-destructs), and now we see the results: Now we have a buncha Borg who are the utter opposite of their original M.O. and it's legitimately chilling and with potential to have one-upped TBOBW. These Borg don't care about technology or equipment. They do not want to add lives to grow their ranks but to murder in heinous ways. There's a great plot in this. These new Borg, since they're the opposite of the Collective, might find Data to be a worthy addition to their ranks since the Collective said Data would be obsolete. But, nope, this is now the tail end of running-on-farty-fumes season 6 of the soapbox show, so we have Troi now able to read positronic technology as opposed to organic chemistry and can sense "real emotions" out of him. Complete with more farting muzak-- well, thankfully there's little music and the plotting strong enough to carry itself. Until the end, where "The brothers of Soong are here in a sweeps week bonanza, moohahaha!" WTF is this garbage. Oh, never mind how much worse part 2 descends into as well...
Since I was editorializing just a teensy bit, it's safe to say that - in terms of the use of Lore alone - these three are in the same order I'd vote them in as well.
In terms of rating the overall stories, "Descent" is actually #1 - but only if you remove the dumb Lore inclusion and I'm pretty sure these shiny new Borg would have figured themselves out without Lore needing to do his schmaltzy song and dance routine in pt 2.
So with that aside, in terms of overall stories as they are, the aforementioned ordering remains the same. Neither "Brothers" nor "Descent" comes close, and even "Brothers" has better execution and ideas handling, which says a lot since "Descent" wouldn't have taken much to be the runner-up for in terms of story as killer psycho Borg are downright creepy, but in comes Lore... (never mind how much worse it gets in pt 2)
