Lord Sovereign
The resident Britbong
Yup. And the problem with that is simple: adventure films like these require an impressive opponent. A weak villain hurts the story. It kills the stakes. It eliminates the audience's respect for both the villain and the hero. If the villains are unimpressive, then how can they ever be a credible threat? And if we're told they're a threat anyway, then how come the heroes haven't dealt with them yet? Surely, if the villains are as useless as they are shown to be, defeating them cannot be so hard? And yet, the heroes struggle and incur major losses. The implication becomes that the good guys must be even worse losers than the villains. Otherwise, they'd have won by now.
Worst part is, they actually had a decent set up for the First Order in that regard. The core idea (that got promptly forgotten) was that the Order had learned from the Empire's mistakes (command bridges more built into their ships and thus better protected, larger hangar bays for more durable fighters, better equipped and trained troops, etc) and was operating from a position of weakness against the New Republic.
They're essentially a diminished Empire gone full fascist mode, with an emphasis on quality over quantity with a fanatical officer corps. That could have worked very well indeed, especially if the "order" of the First Order got contrasted with the still chaotic and recovering Republic.
They even had a pretty badass theme that never got used.