I still can't believe Snoke didn't end up being Plagueis. The character designs are similar, the cheating death and relationship to the Emperor is clear and obvious... it would have made the whole Return-of-Palpatine plot line more believable to just roll with that.
I was traveling for much of the time since TROS came out, and didn't want to post longer opinions from my phone, but I'd just say that I enjoyed it a lot. I don't know if it was great or anything, but I do think that JJ Abrams had a nearly impossible task, to tie up a 9 film arc in a way that made sense, to pay homage to earlier films and a ton of characters, to work around the passing of Carrie Fisher, and to do something big and exciting. I think he did a stellar job, even if it's not going to make half of the fans happy. It's weird to me how many people seem to totally hate it.
While I think the planet killing cannons on the Star Destroyers was a moderate twist on a tired idea, and just a massive fleet of twelve bazillion Star Destroyers and troops would have been a less over the top thread.... I particularly loved all the Sith Temple stuff... the Emperor being back really worked for me and I felt like he brought a gravitas to the threat that the First Order just never had... I wish they hadn't killed off Luke and he could have had a bigger role, and I honestly would have been fine with Ben being redeemed and then also surviving... and him and Rey living happily ever after to rebuild the galaxy and the Jedi Order but I get why they did it this way.
So yeah - as a 39 year old OT purist, my take was that it was far better than TLJ and did the best it could to wrap things up.