For me, it's easily sakaguchi. No contest really, and it really is a disgrace to compare the two.

First of all, I will talk more about nomura's character "designs". And by that I mean he doesn't so much design characters as he rips of archetypes from anime and japanese culture. The males are all cut from the same cloth. Typically angsty pretty boys that could have stepped out of any sailor moon episode. Auron, his most "creative" (IE lifted from various sources) design is a bit of Cloud Strife (who imself looks like he stepped out of the eighties anime Beserk) mixed with a buddhist monk and a stereotypical samurai.

Then there are the Female designs he does. Once again, very derivitive designs that are always based on the same model. It's either they stepped out of a shojo anime or right out of a geisha house (IE yuna and lulu). and while I find his work on FFX to be awful (whats up with holy icons in body paint and G-Strings) It's his work on X-2 that makes me want to wash my eyes out with bleach. Worst story EVER in a FF title painted over with his own personal final fantasy. I mean when you take a religious icon like yuna and strip her of all her clothes just for fun, you know you got some funky fetishes the public has no business knowing about. I see X-2 of Nomura's way of giving the middle finger to sakaguchi after he left, since X was sakaguchi's project.

Oh yah, and If I live to be a million, I'll still never understand what people see in sephiroth. V-neck leather and a unhealthy fascination with cloud do not a classic villain make. He's sesshomaru from Inu Yasha with both arms, less personality, and a worse sense of fashion.

Then there is His less than stellar work as a director. A director is responsible for the entire final product, but typically it's the story, the characters, and the writing that the director focuses on the most. In this sense, Nomura is a spectacular failure. the story, characters, and events in FFVIII were all awful, and felt like a four year olds fan fiction then an actual story. X-2 was even worse from a storytelling point of view. Kingdom Hearts was actually decent for a while, I like some of the plot twists and themes, but then the story imploded for the final quarter. It was just so contrived and idiotic. How is it the light from kingdom hearts destroys ansem, who has become a heartless, yet the gates to kingdom hearts have to be sealed because it is overrun with enough heartless to destroy the universe. Arrrrrggghh. And the sequel was even worse. Now sora is all grown up and a badarse... but still deeply sensitive (arent they all) and thats about it for any real story. The rest is final fantasy and Disney fanservice.

Then there was advent children. The film was a terrible storytelling train wreck, and anyone who tells you different is either getting paid to lie to you, a FFVII fanboy, or a sadist. The animation was pretty stiff, almost to the point of making the film look like a puppet show. I'm a action buff, and I can tell you the action scenes were every bit as haphazzard and poorly thought out as the story.

Sakaguchi in comparison has his flaws, he likes to move a bit slow at times, but he is a much more competent storyteller. His titles all play with different themes and ideas, showing how versitile he is. His film, Spirits Within has it's flaws, but it's still a damn fine Sci Fi flick and head and shoulders above Nomura in every possible way imaginable. Save for Final Fantasy fan service.

And thats all I have to say about that.