TFA being deliberately similar to ANH highlights some flaws.
The big one to me is that there were kinda two plots going on that didn't have much to do with each other and don't mesh well. (Disclaimer: I've only seen TFA once and it's been a while since I watched ANH.)
In ANH, the entire story is defined by the death star. The plans R2-D2 is carrying at the beginning are the death star plans, which are used to destroy the death star in the final battle. In between, the death star destroying Alderaan establishes how deadly it is, and the escape from the death star shows how big it is.
In TFA, again the Empire-alikes are chasing info carried by a droid, but this time it's a map to Luke Skywalker. Comparing to ANH, you'd think that the movie's story would be defined by the search for Luke Skywalker. As you'd expect if that's true, the search succeeds in the final scene. Problem is, in between, what they're doing often doesn't have much to do with searching for Luke at all. Destroying the Starkiller base, instead of being a triumph itself, is just removing a distraction from the actual goal, especially since it turns out that R2-D2 already had the final piece of information anyway.
This creates a weird situation where the climactic battle doesn't actually do much to advance the plot.
My overall feeling about TFA is that it's a good Star Wars movie, though not really a good movie outside the context of the series. That's better than the prequels managed, so it's worth a watch if you like Star Wars at all.