Takeharu Ishimoto

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He's a tremendously gifted arranger and synth programmer/operator

I would argue otherwise. His Kingdom Hearts II programming was appalling -- easily outshined by Ryo Yamazaki on Kingdom Hearts and Hirosato Noda / Keiji Kawamori on Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix +. I know the games have a lot of memory limitations due to the need to simultaneously load battle and field music, but that doesn't make plain bad samples forgivable. His other synthesizer operator works are limited, the main ones being Final Fantasy X, Vagrant Story, and most of the All Star Pro-Wrestling series. Compared to equivalent works by Ryo Yamazaki, Keiji Kawamori, or Yasuhiro Yamanaka, I'm thoroughly unimpressed.

As for arrangement works, I found the arrangements on Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII lacked fulfilling soundscapes. The more accomplished arrangements there were mostly by Kazuhiko Toyama who did "Mission Start", "The World's Enemy", and "Fulfilled Desire". His Final Fantasy X Vocal Collection arrangement was pretty interesting, but he seems to prefer the mainstream rather than abstract path these days. I'm not expecting another Super Smash Bros. Brawl from Dissidia Final Fantasy. The soundtrack is going to be plain and uninspired, in my opinion.

Anyway, Takeharu Ishimoto's reception as a composer has been very mixed around hardcore game music fans such as those at SoundtrackCentral and other big forums. However, if you read most reviews of the games Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII or The World Ends With You, you'll see his soundtracks are quite popular with the gamers. It's rare to see such enthusiastic fan reactions to such soundtracks and I don't think many if any Square Enix composers have done that in recent years.

Square Enix's music team is very small these days and they're putting a lot of weight on Takeharu Ishimoto. Maybe that's one reason for, say, his instrumental tracks on The World Ends With You being completely underdeveloped or his reliance on endless main theme arrangements in Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII. However, I'm inclined to agree with the consensus among the 'elitists'. He lacks a firm grasp of musicality and just churns out pure junk. The World Ends With You was fun and different, but also plain awful.

Jam it back in, in the dark.