Your Opinion On Yasumi Matsuno
 

How do you think Yasumi Matsuno stacks up when compared to other “more” popular game designers and what do you think of his work? I remember stumbling across a tread on the Final Fantasy IGN Board with one poster (can’t remember his/her name) calling him an “unproven talent”. While everyone entitled to their opinion and conclusion I just couldn’t agree with that, I find him a much more capable director when compared to Tetsuya Nomura and Motomu Toriyama. Yasumi Matsuno and Hideki Kamiya are my up most current favorite game designers from Japan. Nomura seems content to stay in his shell and cater to mass (anime fans) with no intentions on improving himself as a game designer, and Toriyama unlike Matsuno have grown.

Matsuno’s Ivalice has one of the most relieved worlds in Japanese RPGs and its shame that his vision of Ivalice will never be relieved, as said by Motomu Toriyama “Ivalice became more Square Enix's world than that of the former Quest team”. Nomura is to focus on the cool factor to concern himself about creating a believable world or good Gameplay for that matter. Look at how the uninspiring the new races that Toriyama conceived are compared to the Bangaa, Viera, and Seeq. The typical human with angle/bird wings Aegyl or Yuichi Murasawa’s equally typical Grai:><:. Yeah, admittedly I’m more than a little resentful at what Square Enix game designers has done so far to Matsuno’s Ivalice

I so what do you make of Sakimoto’s claim that he’s currently working on something with now, I know I’m anxious to see what he can do without Square’s supposed incessant meddling.
Final Fantasy XII Composer Hitoshi Sakimoto Interview from 1UP.com

Like with most of the directors over at Square, I only like aspects of each director. When it comes to Matsuno, I think he has an excellent ability to envision the relations of the world and making aspects of his worlds fit together well. His games always have complex political structures and it's nice to see some RPGs that are more than a Kingdom, Princess and some dude who comes along and wants to save the world.

But other than that aspect I find his world designs themselves pretty boring. Personally I prefer the highly stylized worlds Nomura creates (though his characters are a totally different subject) over the more 'realistic' style found in Matsuno headed games. I like the highly creative aspects such as some of the stuff we are seeing in FFXIII VS like the main character using massive amounts of floating swords, being able to teleport and run up and down buildings over the grounded medieval worlds created by Matsuno. But I do still prefer the more complex gameplay systems that come from Matsuno. They just lack the style I'm looking for. I also respect Nomura for being able to create various stylized worlds with Matsuno has pretty much only made games that take place in Ivalice. So in that sense he is unproven talent until he moves away from Ivalice and tries something new.

As you can tell I'm hoping for the day that we see an actual collaboration between Mastuno and Nomura. Nomura's extravagant stylization (minus characters) mixed with Mastuno's depth and complexity would be a worthy game from Square-Enix.

Hey, I remember you. I also remember what you're talking about and that I had disagreed with whoever said that.

Matsuno is probably my favorite of them all. Some people may not realize that before Ivalice there was Zeteginia (which thankfully Square hasn't tampered with), but anyways, I love the amount of care and detail that Matsuno puts into his worlds. Everytime I play a Matsuno game I know that I'm going to get an epic story, detailed world, and strategic gameplay. That makes him the most consistent guy in terms of putting forth a creative vision that results in a great game. Even if Square forced Matsuno to sacrifice some of his artistic integrity in FFXII for the sake of appealing to the mainstream, it still had an amazing world with grand landscapes and impressive architecture. Ogre Battle, Tactics Ogre, Final Fantasy Tactics, Vagrant Story, and Final Fantasy XII... I'd say that those games prove his ability without question, and I think he's the only director to have two games that got perfect scores from Famitsu.

I agree with you on Nomura, of course. The Kitase/Nomura combo have done nothing but recycle the anime-inspired style of FFVII, and yet none of their subsequent worlds have been able to achieve what Midgar did, which in itself is a microcosm of what Matsuno is able to achieve time and time again. Nomura does nothing but pander to the lowest common denominator with his overstylized, emo, anime-derivative stuff. FFXIII doesn't pique my interest at all. If other people get excited at seeing Shiva turn into a motorbike, that's their thing.

He's not the only director, but one of. Eiji Aonuma of Nintendo EAD also has two perfect scores to his name (Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker).

Isn't Zeteginia a neighboring country to Ivalice in Final Fantasy Tactics? I'm probably mistaken, but it always felt like this world he crafted was connected to that previous Ogre universe.

Anyway, I love Matsuno. In a world of homogeneous stories and gameplay, the man is subversive. It's his strongest and most admirable trait, someone I hope other developers would aspire to emulate as far as quality is concerned.

Whoa, I never knew that Orges Zeteginia was actually a neighboring country to Ivalice? I never knew that, I guess the similarities in atmosphere between Orge Tatics and Fianl Fantasy Tatics was more intentional then I thought. That diffently adds another dimension as to how I see him and his Ivalice (not Squares).

The country I was thinking of was called "Zeltenia" in the initial translation of FFTactics. Again, I'm not certain, I'm going by a gut feeling here.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that Matsuno's work were always realistic. Ogre Battle and Final Fantasy Tactics both have their own flavor, and Vagrant Story is very stylized. And it still looks good today.

RotorBlade pretty much hit it dead on. Most of the releases he's created have been a great challenge, and are very open games that can be played differently each time. It's kind of a shame that Square kinda whored him out.

I hope those rumors of him working on the Wii are true. I read some where that he wasn't impressed by the Wii, but who knows. Ogre Battle is perfect for the DS and the Wii.

I looked it up, and they were two separate kingdoms in two separate worlds: Zetegenia and Zeltennia. Just wanted to squash anything that could snowball from what I said.

HEY...THAT'S NOT NICE!

Er, I mean, yeah that's pretty much it.

I think I'd like Matsuno as an anime director much moreso than a game director. I might be at odds with FFT's gameplay, but I liked the way the story progressed.

Oh, Final Fantasy Tactics is definitely overrated on a gameplay standpoint. The time spent grinding in that game in the beginning to get to some level of efficiency is a gigantic strike against it. I definitely find the Ogre Battle series of games to be Matsuno's best foot forward, have you tried them, GoldfishX?

I've heard mixed reviews on them, but I pretty much stayed away from SRPG gameplay until I got into Nippon Ichi. Now, SRPG's are just such devastating timesinks, I rarely play them (I even forgot there was a Disgaea 2 the other day).

FFT wasn't bad and I enjoyed it from scenario to scenario, but I found it extremely limiting and the time consumption didn't seem to add up to success later in the game. Then there was the bullshit at the end of Chapter 3...

Until Nippon Ichi? Dude, just... come on. Seriously.

And what other significant SRPG's were around between FFT and Disgaea (actually, I started at La Pucelle, then did Disgaea)? Yeah, hardly any. Fire Emblem was out in that timeframe as well though and Ogre Battle 64 was out of the question (no N64).

Also, I prefer the humor of Nippon Ichi (although Pucelle gets pretty serious at one point in the storyline and the ending is less than cheers and beers) to the deep, political struggle of FFT in any case.

Front Mission for starters, Bahamut Lagoon. Emulation was well available for those, not sure if translations were complete either two. Though Front Mission 3 was definitely not worth missing out on, and that saw release stateside.

Edit: Do you discount Shining Force as an SRPG? If not, there you go.

So, uh, what exactly is wrong with Nippon Ichi? FM3 didn't interest me at all (both the aesthetics and the fact I wasn't in love with the SRPG gameplay when it came out) and I barely count the other two as being available (I don't think they had translations and having a computer that ran SNES ROMs at any decent speed was a pipedream until a few years ago).

Nothing, really -- that I'd want to mention here. There were just games prior to their games' availability. Though I take what access I did have for granted, I was emulating successfully around 1999. Personal shock. I'd still count Shining Force, personally, as well.

Well, like I said, I didn't see SRPG's in a positive light until after La Pucelle (I had zero expectations going into it), so the mere existence of such games doesn't really mean much. Shining Force had the unfortunate fate of being released on the Genesis and I was firmly on the SNES side of that war and Shining Force III was released in very miniscule amounts, eluding my hard earned money with relative ease. I actually did own Dragonforce at one point ($35 during a Saturn liquidation!), but like Tactics, I found it gratingly repetitive and unrewarding the more hours I sunk into it (although it WAS a blast for the first...20 hours or so).

See, it's a fact that FFTactics tends to get better as you invest time into it. Since that's when you get more options for character setups and such. So I'm not sure how you come to that conclusion, considering in chapter 3 the worst part about Riovannes is, even in the face of preparation, Rafa being dumb. Though I hear that specific movement causes her to act a certain way, it certainly isn't fun to just waltz into. Anyway, I've always felt that it's getting started in Tactics that is usually the most cause for frustration as you go along and that much I've seen universally agreed upon between most folks. As far as you discovering SRPGs via Nippon Ichi, just color me surprised it seems.

Chapter 3 where Ramza is caught in that fight by himself and you can't backtrack to gain EXP or abilities...Yeah, THAT pissed me off (then the "rush to the NPC" map afterwards was cute as well) Then, after RESTARTING to make SURE I have auto X potions for Ramza in that sequential mess, I started getting fucking mauled in Chapter 4, officially putting the game on the chop block. So it got much worse...I greatly enjoyed much of Chapters 1-3...The last couple maps of 3 and what I saw of 4 were what killed the game for me. Then there was the sobering fact of how much time went into playing it...

Well, just know that my love of Matsuno and his games/stories have not blinded me to all of that. Because... well, yeah.

You know, there's something that I really hate about this designer... for some weird reason: He wants us to use a freaking guide!!!

I mean, this is very relative and stuff, but for us (guys who try to reach 100% without guide)... the games of this guy are a freaking pain in the ass. Normally, I can make 80-90% of a regular game, but from Matsuno's branded entertainment I hardly reach 50-60% or less.

Nothing wrong about it, but... :mad:

Megavolt now that you mentioned it I do remember you, I don't really post on IGN FF Board, but I have lurked there on many occasion, you’re known as Megavolt67 over there correct. I tried looking for that tread but it seems it’s in the void now. Well I try not to come down too hard on Square’s current employee roster, particularly the Nomura/Kitase duo you just mentioned, I just believe he truly earned my respect and admiration. I just what ever trouble he endured during the development process of FF12 haven’t shaken him up do the point to where he will no longer take risks and give in to mainstream conformity. Megavolt, are there any other designers either eastern/western that you’re not particularly fond of.

I would disagree, but only to a certain point. The game is difficult at the beginning, when you're all a bunch of squabs barely fitting your armor. Later on when you get mid level skills and classes the game becomes incredibly easy. And then they give you Thunder God Cid and just ruin the difficulty.

But, I think that was intentional. By the time you get him the game is more about wrapping up the story line. Most of the game is out of the way by then, and only side quests and such are left to explore.

On another note, since I've been playing back through it I've found the game to be much easier than play throughs several years ago. I chalk that up to having a rather intimate understanding of the gameplay, knowing what classes work best where and how to be an efficient group of killers. Mainly, though, I've had to do very little grinding.

I've found that Ramza's Squire class is an excellent starting class as well.

Limiting in terms of...? It's fairly linear, story wise. But then again, so are most SRPGs. That I can understand. But as far as gameplay, well... You can pretty much approach each battle however you want. You can have a squad of Knights and just Rend Speed/Power/MP and beat the hell out of anyone in your way, or you can have a platoon of wizards to pretty much napalm the hell out of everything. It all depends on how much time you want to spend with the game.

For example, a Battle Chemist. Give them Equip Heavy Armor from the Knight Class. Give them black magic from the Black Mage class, and equip them with guns with the Chemist class and you'll have a well fortified Chemist that you can put in the middle of battle instead of keeping him on the outskirts of danger. That gives you more versatility in throwing items since you won't have to worry about your chemist getting picked on.

Kartia, Hoshigami, Front Mission, Ring of Red, Growlanser, Shining Force III, Advance Wars, Dragon Force... off the top of my head. Games largely from 1996 to 2002.

I wouldn't say there's anything inherently wrong with them. What little I've been able to play seemed to focus more on anime stylings than actual gameplay.

Gratingly repetitive and unrewarding would be a good way to describe most old school console RPGs. :-P

This I can understand. The fight in Riovannes castle is a bitch for the unprepared. There's a pretty easy solution for it that most people missed. Like I mentioned above, Ramza's starting class is pretty solid. It has a Speed Up ability. Just use that in the one on one fights and you'll make toast of Gafgarion and Belias.

The only main issue with the game is when you fight the two assassins. Often times the NPC will take the first turn, put herself right in harms way, and then die next turn. Nothing you can do about it. Dunno if that's fixed in the PSP version of the game, though.

My point isn't that it's impossible to break through the beginning. It's that it is grating. Specializing leads to a more enjoyable experience, but I found myself having over leveled characters in spite of this. There's tons of variety to Tactics, and that is its most redeeming quality. Again, I just hate starting new games for it.

I covered most of those in my other reply. Growlanser was not available in the US (Generations came out in 2004 and is a very sweet package). I didn't mention Kartia or Hoshigami intentionally. I forgot Advance Wars (now that's one I've been putting off forever) and Ring of Red never looked too impressive. Like I said...The EXISTENCE of the games isn't the issue, but my own interest is.

Ironically though, I did play the first 5 chapters or so of Sakura Wars 2 before the Japanese text started to get on my nerves. I rather enjoyed it.


Funny...The gameplay clicked for me around the second or third map and didn't really let up in La Pucelle. The boss fight in the second-to-last chapter was downright exhilarating and I love the way you line up the colored blocks on the maps. I personally liked that one more than Disgaea.


And a lot of modern ones as well, which is why I play so few of them...What's your point? At least old school RPG's play extremely fast.

My point with Dragonforce is it LOOKS exciting and is for the start, then it dawns on how repetitive and random it is (guys leaving your army for no reason, for example), so the reward of capturing more territory is kind of lost. 20 hours into it, I just couldn't take anymore of the same old, same old...

I like my solution: Design the game right, so I don't have to restart because I can't get out and level the fuck up/change abilities and I don't have to use a strategy guide to warn me the (potentially) hardest battle in the game is coming up!

FFTactics certainly isn't the only game to put you in these fucked up situations... nor does it force you to only use one save file.

I really appreciate Matsuno. FFXII is my least favorite of his offerings. What I really like about Matsuno is his attention towards developing mature dialogue and story-line elements, which is something I always appreciated about FFXII, even if the story didn't seem fully fleshed out.

I have been a fan of Matsuno since the original Ogre Battle and ESPECIALLY after Final Fantasy Tactics.

I think everyone has been in that situation regarding Riovanes. This kind of pain actually brings people together! That being said, I wouldn't change a THING regarding the design of FFT.
The game provides a simple choice; learn the mechanics of the game and the systems of combat... or fail. Riovanes becomes extremely easy after a few tries. I am glad it was THAT challenging.

Even then, no game should allow that kind of scenario. Unless it tells you something about it. (A recent example would be FFXII)

It's THE most extreme, easily. I mean, if you're careless in a game and you forget to heal or run out of potions or you're underleveled, that's one thing. That's fixable. But no way to save or get away to power-up...no way to win unless you're fully and totally prepared...Never anything that bad, unless it was an optional boss (see: Emerald Weapon). And Tactics is a time-consuming MF to begin with, so that only magnifies the issue.

Uh, yeah...More than one save file...I'll get right on it...Aw shit, back in the days of PS1, I only had 15 blocks of memory and I had to ration them between other games. Tsk, tsk, sorry Tactics. I'm not giving you another FUCKING BLOCK ON MY CARD!

Xenogears.

You had a lack of memory cards and I didn't, sounds like a personal problem, not to sound heartless. Certain old school RPGs are notoriously unforgiving, that's a fact of life. There are things people had to do to get around them, and I feel it's a giant gray area of those who used those methods such as mapping their own dungeons or writing down equipment and growth stats when games wouldn't spell it all out for them.

Yeah, FFTactics threw you into a fucked up situation, I don't deny that. I also can't deny there are things certain players would do to avoid things like that, because it certainly wasn't the first or last time you'd fall into a "no going back" scenario.

Eh. I'm bored at work, so I just replied. Sorry if it seemed like I was exasperating the argument.

I bought both La Pucelle and Disgaea and didn't get very far in either. I'll chalk my opinion on them up to inherited bias via what I know about the series.

Well, no one said it would be easy. You could over power your way through the battle easy, you'd just have to spend some time grinding, but that would be a requirement if you want to bash your way through anyway. My point though, is that this particular instant isn't so much a game flaw because it's easily beatable with the skills you have at hand.

Honestly, though. We can't be angry at a game because it forces us to try a different strategy from time to time, can we? :-P

Eh. Keeping multiple save files was pretty much a necessity back in the day.

Well, again. Weigraf is easily beaten by using the very first class and skills you get in the game. So it's not exactly that drastic.

Nah, only when it forces a restart of a game I'm 30+ hours into. ;p


Nope.

Diff'rent strokes I suppose.

Hell, I still do it out of habit. Even did it on Eternal Sonata, though I never needed it.

:-D

I loved the designs in FFT and the artwork. I know it doesn't sit well with some people, but I thought it was different in a good way and the costume designs looked awesome to me. I haven't played Vagrant Story or Ogre Battle, so I can't comment much on that end (I will get around to it eventually... I hope). I still consider FFT to have one of the best plots in an rpg and I really enjoyed playing it.

FFTA is just a nightmare I wish to forget entirely and FF12 was lacking quite a bit. The character designs in that game were downright awful.

Maybe I played too much Fire Emblem, but I always considered FFT to be fairly easy from start to finish. Then again I spent about 98% of the game just levelling up cause that was by far the most fun thing about the game.

Overall I don't particularly like Matsuno's stories or settings. I actually do like his character designs, though, in FFT, FFTA and FF12. So it seems like I'm in the minority in this respect.

And I think all his games are actually really fun to play, which most of the Square games are absolutely not. He did Vagrant Story right?

But, I really think that if he'd just leave Sakimoto to die in a fire, I'd already have a much better opinion of his games.

FFT had great music you heathen. :(

The guy that did the character design for the above mentioned games was a fella named Yoshida, who's done the character work for pretty much every Matsuno game.

Yup. The guy pretty much created the Ivalice universe.

While we're on the subject, I recently bought my brother a PSP for Christmas, along with Tactics and Jeanne D'Arc. I've played the hell out of FFT, but I put in Jeanne last night. I was surprised that... it wasn't an FFT/Tactics Ogre clone. From the screenshots that I saw (everything was in the isometric view) and the fact that it was Level 5, I expected a Tactics inspired game. It definitely reuses alot of Fire Emblem mechanics. Which is not a bad thing. No perma death, though.

I'm about 50/50 on the game right now. Some stuff is great, but then they get bogged down. The opening cinema works pretty well, but then it goes on for several more minutes... Then there's that whole sailor moon moment. But it's all negligible. The combat is great (Hell, it would have to be since it's practically Fire Emblem) so that's what matters the most. Story isn't bad either.

Then there's that Dhoulmagus character. He's interesting.

I noticed that, but apparently he only served as assistant director in OOT. Majora's Mask was the first Zelda that he would head up as lead director.

It's definitely seperate. Zeteginia is a huge continent that includes the countries of Zenobia, Lodis, and Palatinus. Valeria, the main area in Tactics Ogre, is an island off the coast of it. The Ogre games are also connected by recurring characters (some of the Zenobian heroes from the original game) and villains (particularly the Lodis Empire as a belligerent nation intent on subjugating everyone else; the other recurring villain is the evil sorcerer Rashidi, who manipulated the circumstances in the original Ogre Battle and manages to do so in Ogre Battle 64 as well), none of which appear in FFT.

Not specifically. The only other game-related person I'm not fond of is Yasunori Mitsuda. He's easily the most overrated VGM composer in my mind.

You're a day late and a dollar short, I'm afraid. I had already corrected myself, but further specifics never hurt, I suppose.

Yeah, but you followed it with this:

I thought it was meant to imply that even though Zeltenia was not it, there still might be a connection somewhere. That's actually why I went into further specifics, though as you say, there's no harm done either way. Consider it an effort to alleviate any remaining doubts rather than an effort to correct anything that was in error. ;)

It's too bad that the Ogre Battle Encyclopedia site doesn't seem to work anymore. That place had a wealth of information on each game from the series. :(

That's what I was referring to when I said I corrected myself, though again I agree with what you said in principle regardless of me nitpicking. I HAVE CREDIBILITY, SERIOUSLY! I used to visit that site way back when, I would really enjoy another Ogre game on a platform more capable of capturing its robust world.

Too bad Mitsuda possibly went nutso on FFXII. Again, we live in hope.

Ah, I didn't see that part. Thank you for the clarification. ^_~

Hey, I believe you. Anybody who likes Ogre Battle automatically has credibility in my mind. Not even many people who like the Final Fantasy Tactics approach seem to 'get' the mass army style of Ogre Battle games like MotBQ and POLC. You have to appreciate RPGs for what they are as games and not just what they provide in terms of a linear storyline in order to be an Ogre Battle fan. Ogre Battle's story is told as much (if not moreso, especially in the original game) from the details of its world as it is from standard cutscenes.

Now I've got you! ;)

Yeah, I don't know what happened to Matsuno after that one. We can definitely stay hopeful based on what Sakimoto was saying about working on another project with Matsuno.

Yeah, that's definitely a slip-up. But I've got you elsewhere, don't worry. Well, I do enjoy when you opine on the series. Because I am rarely reading thoughts that are just going off pure infatuation, in that respect.

Elsewhere: http://www.gamingforce.org/forums/rp...tml#post564484

Ouch. Was that an insult, or am I reading it wrong? I was only kidding around since we had just gone back and forth before on the nature of my corrective statements. I didn't intend to antagonize you.

You're reading it wrong, I suppose. It was meant to be a compliment.

I'm glad I asked. I thought that 'based on pure infatuation' was saying that I write fanboy drivel. Just some curious wording there, I suppose. I almost mistook a compliment for a stinging retort. That's communication on a message board for you.

I try too hard at times, but I'm glad that's all sorted out. Again, it's nice to, in simple terms, find someone who can see a game for what it is rather than what they would like it to be.

Saved for future generations.

See, you have misunderstandings... and you have people being obtuse.