Quote Originally Posted by Azar View Post
I think Square's recent output as a developer has been awful. They were caught completely off guard with the jump to HD graphics and did not know how to scale their technology or development to adapt. But that's only a part of the problem. I don't think they have the right people leading their development. Tetsuya Nomura's character designs are so samey, and who the smurf knows what's happened with Versus XIII under his leadership.

Yoshinori Kitase, who has produced/directed the Final Fantasy XIII games, is far worse. I honestly don't know how much blame to ascribe to him versus Square in general, but his games have really strayed from the elements that made earlier entries in the series great, focusing on tropey characters and stupid plots to cater to the niche Japanese audience.

What I mostly want to know is what Hiroyuki Ito has been doing. He hasn't lead a project in the past five years--at least not anything that's been made public--but before that he co-directed XII, directed IX, and co-directed VI. He's also helped write and design the battle systems of several of their games. Basically, he's the smurfing man. If anyone can make another great game there, it's him.

Also, I'm not a big Dragon Quest fan, but it seems like the Enix side of the equation is still doing okay? People loved DQIX, and DQX seems to be doing okay, if not great, in Japan. They certainly haven't had the same quality drop off as Square's games.

Quote Originally Posted by Flaming Ice View Post
Probably part of the problem is how games are rated too.
Wha?
Why would you blame Nomura here? We had 4 different entries by different directors, Matsuno with XII, Toriyama with XIII, Tanaka with XIV and Nomura with non-main title which is Versus XIII, all of them suffered from same management problems or long development cycle or under delivering or some backlash so tell me why would a Hiroyuki Ito game would fair better with same management, teams or producers?

It is worth to mention that a big budget game like Last Remnant suffered from management problems which lead to canceling PS3 version.

My point is Nomura, Matsuno ,Tanaka, Toriyama and kitase all managed to create wide range of successful titles in the past but all of them hit a wall, so why would we need to blame one or two leaders when the majority suffered from same problems.

Second point, Tetsuya Nomura didn't design characters in XII,XIII Saga and XIV with exception of the 5 lead characters in XIII. His role in the series has been greatly reduced to point that he might did more work in FFV and FFVI.