It's a matter of personal taste, really.

The Crystal Tower raids did nothing for me since I always found G'raha Tia to be a terrible character. I would have strongly preferred to work alongside Doga and Unei to a greater degree instead of seeing them unceremoniously cast aside to make way for this:



Matsuno's contributions to the story, however, greatly fleshed out Garlemald and allowed us to see much more of its better side than the MSQ's showed us - so I'm struggling to see where the claim of the Ivalice content having no connection to the main story elements is coming from. There's also a fair few links to other important lore elements, such as how Ultima can be tied to Hydaelyn, Mikoto giving us another look at what the Echo is capable of and much more.