The new characters are really well-done, capture everyone's imagination and introduce tantalising mysteries!
In terms of plot though, I'm not convinced J.J.Abrams really knew what he was doing ; too much illogical stuff in the movie for my tastes. I don't mind comic-books settings at all, what annoys me is when you don't even get consistency within the settings created. You can have a story universe with whatever crazy rules you want, no problem, but if the things going on within your story universe are not internally consistent, the story will be damaged.
It's good that a new director is taking over the next movie, hopefully the next movie will have stronger internal logic.