This is a masterpiece of film editing.
When I saw The Force Awakens in theater, I was on the edge of my seat until the First Order destroyed Hosnian Prime. After that, the stakes fell from saving the Republic to saving a Resistance base. At that point, I realized the film would end in a rehash of the rebellion destroying the Death Star before it fired on the rebel base. I honestly stopped caring about what happened next and began texting on my phone.
When I watched this edit, I no longer had to question why the Hosnian system was visible to the naked eye from lightyears away after mere seconds of screen time.
The plot still largely borrows from A New Hope but the fact the Resistance fails to destroy the superweapon in time to save the day draws attention away from the similarities. I still hate the Rathtars - which look comically like flying spaghetti and meatball monsters - but that sequence likely could not be cut. I would delete the scene of Hux informing Snoke he found the location of the rebel base because it never affects the plot in this edit.
Overall, this edit saved the film for me.