Absolutely agreed. I certainly did not want to say that outside gaming Kojima is better known than Nomura. Both are more or less unknown as far as I can tell.

And it is quite disappointing to hear FF7s shortcommings like that. Did you play the original? And was that different from the remake concerning the anime-esque stuff and jibberish ending? No spoilers please.

And for what it is worth, I think Kojima is a far better director and writer than Nomura, who seems like an infinitely weirder dude with far less acomplishments to look back on. But Nomura also would not get a special E3-Moment, descending floating light-tiles to announce his new game. Their status and clout within the gaming community seems defferent to me, insofar as Kojima's is more inflated.

Many people really like FF7R. They like the flow of battle, changes made to update the battle system etc. But for me it's more how FF feels is more than just 'it has the same characters and basic plot'.

FF7R covers just the first 4-5 hours of the original game, extended to 30 hours through extra stuff, extra plot points that will lead nowhere, changed story beats and added extra content like hunts just to extend the game, the 'end' was, well no idea. I presume done so they can make changes to the next installment to change the overall plot of FF7 totally.

In FF7 it never felt like you had to go out of your way to level or do extra content to fill things out, to me it was all story until near the very end when when you unlocked the ship and could actually explore. But this isn't really a fault with FF7R, it's more something in modern FF games, 'hunting' missions basically. This is personal opinion mind.

I get you last point on Kojima, but gaming needs that kind of high profile status director/writer. Maybe he is overrated but if not him, who do we have? :P

Thanks for the details - I guess me not knowing FF7 will soften the blow. But this stinks. I guess I will go back at some point and play the original. Just to see how Nomura f*ed it up.

And who do we have? Druckman (Naughty Dog) is a bit of a star (even tough I dislike TLoU part 2 with a passion and was lukewarm on Uncharted 4). Barlog is great, but God of War 2 and 2018 is not a big portfolio (even though quality is top). David Cage is a tool. And Nomura crawled out of an edge lord shonen anime.

In a post above somebody said that it is now more about studios since there are so many more people involved than in the 90s and 80s. I guess that is true. There are a lot of interesting studios I can think of. But not many people. That is a bit sad and to a degree it feels farther away from the core of art. We get a Spielberg-movie, the movie of a person. But we get a rockstar-game, the game of a company. Feels less personal, less influenced by a specific vision.

Who do we have is really a good question. Because who we have says a lot about the state of the medium through its audiences appreciation. We decide (to a significant degree at least) who is getting big. And the list of the big directors who do not appear as companies, but as people, is short and largely uncompelling. Perhaps Kojima really is the one we chose to represent the artistic accomplishments of the medium. And we could do worse. But I wonder how much better we can do in the future.

Vastly underrated. Most of his games go over gamer's heads because he doesn't dumb them down, and this leads people to come to the conclusion that they're all convoluted messes without any substance. But that couldn't be further from the truth. They're (the main MGS titles) genius games.

I enjoyed FF7 remake, but the exploration was very weak. I wasted a lot of time trying to look for secrets or secret dialogue that didn't exist. Ended up finishing normal with around or a little under 30 hours and I'd say 10 hours of that was wasted backtracking and talking to every NPC multiple times. As far as storytelling, I would say FF7R was decent. Nomura was originally an animator or character artist I think so it makes sense he wouldn't be the greatest developer for storytelling. I personally found Kingdom Hearts to go off the rails very early on so it's always been a criticism of a series I would otherwise rate highly. 

As a game, it's not bad, pretty good infact. If it was a whole new FF game, new plot new characters same gameplay, I might have even really liked it but it wasn't, it was a 'Remake' of one of my favourite games ever so it had to meet certain standard.

True on Nomura, he does seem to know the right feel of gameplay in KHs. But if it wasn't for Disney characters and the gameplay, I would have turned it off long ago, story is not the best.

 FF7R story is awful. KH kinda shit. Music is excellent. They did nail Aerith and Tifa esp. Barrets VA is fucking horrendous. I will credit adding that bit with Jessie was nice combat is solid but lacked something. But changing so much of the story to make them less at fault and well a certain ending. Stupid. The side quests were awful. Not quite Namco Tales awful but not far behind. I liked the Yuffie stuff more than the main game. Combat was even better.

I was expecting this sort of comment earlier. Now I think we should not dismiss intelligent gamers who get it and don't like it as much as we should not dismiss gamers who don't get what Kojima is trying to say (with mgs for example) and still think it is just cool shit.

But I would be curious to hear what you appreciate and get out of Kojima games, since quite a few comments in this thread (mine included) were rather negative.

Yeah i believe his overrated. He has made some gems but has also fallen flat on others. The trend on high profile names in the gaming industry is if they made 1 masterpiece, they are considered the greatest ever. Its like Silent Hill. First 2 to 3 games were good, the last few were horrible or bad yet people pretend it's the greatest IP in the horror genre and choose to ignore its latest outings.

Kojima's games are brilliant because they are to gaming what Hemingway's novels are to literature. He utilized the iceberg theory, whereby there's the main, easily-digestible (and quite good in its own right) story and game and also things happening underneath which reflect the game's real story. And while some might disagree with that sub-level stuff, it's hard to deny its brilliance... especially considering how deep and thought-provoking the subject matter is. 

Of course, again, the risk you run is a lot of people walking away wondering, what was that? But as an artist myself, I think it was worth it. After all, those first MGS titles are some of the highest-reviewed, and critically-acclaimed games of all time.

Oh, and they also sold well.