Has ff gone down hill since Square Enix

[Bolivar]

Kitase, cause he's the one who cares more about cinematics and graphics than gameplay,

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.

and finally Motomu who is basically their protege.

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...

XII has its own series of issues we can blame but mostly it was internal bickering much like XIII's staff. Still, I would like to point out that game design in Japan is very different than the West. In the West, everyone has a job to play and that's the extent of their contribution. In Japan its a collaborative process, meaning that people from other departments can have a say in how the story and gameplay function as long as the whole team agrees. This is why its so difficult to discern who did what in Japanese games cause one guy may have actually had a hand in a multitude of factors in a game. In other words don't trust the credits.

Example is that Nomura is credited in VI for creating the sprites and some monster designs for the game. What the credits don't tell you is that he came up with the character design for Setzer and Shadow.

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.