Quote Originally Posted by Bolivar View Post
but that's the side of the game he was responsible for in FFV and presumably FFVI. I thought Nomura and Itou handled the battles well in VII and VIII, respectively.
My main issue with battle systems starting with VI is that series began to take a nose dive into easy street for my taste, for all their customization, the game as a whole can't throw anything at you that you can't curb stomp two seconds flat unless you purposely handicap yourself.

As for Kitase, I feel that bringing a cinematic quality to the series was a right move but I feel that lately the series has been taking it too far, and I find myself more often playing FF games with my controller on the ground while I sit and watch the actions going on. Even in the battle systems of XIII, I sorta felt a major disconnect from my input to what is going on in the screen. Like a press of the button leads to canned awesomness and I don't even need to be strategic anymore, just press a few buttons or hit auto battle and let the visual feast unfold before me.

I don't shell out $60 to play a slightly interactive movie, if I wanted to do that I would watch cable and get my "gameplay" from switching to other shows during commercials and trying to see if I can time it back for film coming back on air. I feel Kitase's titles usually have flat gameplay to them and I partially blame it on more focus being on the story and the visuals used to tell it but sometimes I feel its excessive (VIII, X, and XIII).

but he was who put in all the little events and mini-games which were a large reason of what made FFVII possibly the best-paced game in the series. Too bad he didn't do that for his newest game...
I can't find a source anywhere that says he did any of that. Event Planner to me, sounds like a person who helps with translating the scenes from a script into the game format. Someone who is more likely to tell you where the camera is suppose to be for this shot rather than, let's add a racing game here. I feel this is more likely since some sources have said he was the Story Even Planner for VII instead of just Event Planner so I feel its more likely his role had more to do with the story than thinking up game content.


You know I heard it was the other way around in something Tim Rogers wrote, but I wouldn't really put too much stock in his insight... And your VI example kinda shows what it is.
I read it in a few articles back in the day but who knows, things might be changing and the articles could have been on fringe elements rather than the standard, and simply confused the two. It just struck me as being quite amusing.

Reading some background information about what goes on in development for some Japanese games, it sounds like this is usually the case. I feel where the articles I read might be incorrect is in how Western Games are produced cause most of the successful series I know seem to follow the "group development" style as well so who knows.