Honestly.

I'm OK with it, but some of the slice-of-life or more filler parts of the content ultimately shouldn't have belonged in the main story, mainly because it detracts from the severity of it all, and that is a hard thing to balance when you're effectively tying up the end of the world. If the subject of the story were not the end of the world then it would have been a whole lot better. It's not like it was bad filler as such (of the variety of going to sniff a chocobo or playing hide and seek with Yugiri) -- Just hard to juggle.

Some parts of the Thavnair story would have absolutely been better to relegate to a side story.