(should be noted i am a expert of nothing)
1. Jakku is pretty much Tatooine. sandy planet focused around small villages.. shady people trading. Perhaps if they made Jakku a bit more modernized I would accept it.
yeah ... obviously they couldn't think of any new planet types.
2. Are the "portions" food? How does anyone make a profit if they sell dehydrated sheets of meatloaf (it looks like that)
Yeah. basically the dude had a monopoly on the food, so if the people wanted to get food they would have to trade it for him. It's kinda like how people used to trade food as currency.
3. What was so important about the blaster Han gave Rey?
Han gave a girl that hasn't shot anything before a gun. Would you feel conformable giving a girl, that has never held a gun before, a gun?
4. I know Finn is supposed to be some "special" stormtrooper, but how often do stormtroopers go turncoat? And with an army that large, why do they need female troopers and officers?
Not that often. Basically they take babies, program (yes that is the word the used) them to become stormtroopers, and send them out. For some reason Finn gets morals because his comrade wiped their blood on his mask. And i don't think they would care if the babies were male or not.
5. Finn felt a bit too modern
I don't even know what you mean.
6. So the map piece they have, they can't make it out. However, there's an orange pathway going through it. And it's on the rest of the map. Doesn't anyone have a map of the galaxy and be like "OK, so the orange path is this way. These stars aren't in the map R2 is giving us, let's look there!"
Yeah i didn't really get this either. I defiantly remember one of the resistance members saying they ran it but it didn't come up with anything. idk, I just went with it.
7. Really? A "super" death star? I mean, it looked cool, but still.
Yeah! this way there are less planets in the galaxy!
8. Unnecessary bad guy who acts like Thanos. Really. He sits in a chair and is some major bad guy, and he has some evil plan for the next movie...
Sounds like they were setting up the next movies.
9. How did the First order get Vader's mask? Either Luke left it on the Death Star, or it was burned on Endor.
Probably went and found it in Endor, since he looks up to him
10. The lizard squid things felt pointless...
Comical relief? Probably just filler.
11. Kylo Ren looks iffy when his mask is off.
I hope he cuts his hair. Like how does he fit it all in that mask?
12. There wasn't that big a celebration, when they just destroyed a machine bigger and more powerful than either death star.
Probably was, Rey was just like Peace i'm gonna go find Luke now.
13. Despite its smaller size, could the Death Star still blow up the new giant machine's planet?
I don't see why not. It seems the only thing this thing did that the death star didn't is it could do multiple plants :D.