Saw it yesterday. It was very good. The visual style of course was amazing. Red and Abe drinking was a funny scene. The German ectoplasmic guy was sweet too.
From what I've heard about it, it doesn't really tie in anything from the first movie, aside from it having Hellboy's origin which basically was that Rasputin and some Nazis were trying to summon evil things to help out Hitler and what they summoned was a baby demon but the good guys found him and raised him and they named him Ron Perlman.
But who knows they might briefly cover this for the noobs in the new one.