Lost Oddysey for me is the best JRPG this gen, Blue Dragon on the otherhand was good, until i discovered Marumaro... then the game took a biiiiiiiiig dip.

Lost Odd would get a 9/10
Blue Drag would get a 7.5/10

Sakaguchi stopped playing major role in Square's games development since he started working on the Spirits Within. Everything Square produced starting with 1998 is not thanks to him.

I have to say though it's kind of funny yet sad that the only 2 names from Square widely known at the internet are Sakaguchi and Nomura. While neither is(was) really important.

Hironobu Sakaguchi is another overrated gaming 'icon' that people praise without knowing much of his background.

Sakaguchi didn't give us "FF7-FFIX, Xenogears, Vagrant Story, Front Mission, FF Tactics, Parasite Eve, Brave Fencer Musashi, Chrono Cross and Countless others." He only created the first 5 FF games, which quite frankly, they all had similar to three year old fairy-tale book story.

People tend to overlook who took Final Fantasy to the next level; Yoshinori Kitase. He was the writer and the director of the arguably two best Final Fantasy games; FFVI, and FFVII, and he also directed FFVIII. And yet people give credits to Sakaguchi for Kitase's creations, seriously, if you want to find Sakaguchi's creation, check out Spirits Within, one of the worst movies to grace the world, and he was working in Square at that time, but I wonder why I don't see the OP mentioning that.

The sole reason why Square is not like what they used to be is due the buyout from Enix, and that happened mainly because of Sakaguchi's unimaginative creation known as Final Fantasy: The Sprits Within. So make sure to know why many of the Square's most talented guys left the company before giving the credits to the guy who caused that.

Funny part is that I see people giving credits to Sakaguchi for Lost Odyssey, without knowing that the developer of Lost Odyssey is Feel Plus, which is a company formed by most of the Nautilus' employees. Nautilus is the creator of the underrated Shadow Hearts series, in case you guys are wondering...

thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis <3 nomura.

thats so wrong that it is funnny. first he helped make ff 1-6. but then he took a pro -active role in the company on number 7-10 . he was a wesome developer and his games are awesome. but to answer ure question no i don tthink that he is the . just square has moved out of doing turnbased so they r almost out of there element.and they r making games witha a smaller budget and faster which makes the quality of the games detiorate.

Nomura is king!!!

Nomura is a bumb.

I wouldn't say their quality is gone, however. They're the same as they have ever been IMO. Most of those games are just overrated, and people are just now seeing the truth.

I would that one a big huge no.

Lost Odyssey is great, but the talent really didn't leave Square.

One man can make a difference for a game being "great" or "masterpiece". Sakaguchi can be that kind of a man, but he's involvement alone can't make a game a "masterpiece", he also needs a group of people working at his level. That team still belongs to Square-Enix. SE may not produce a masterpiece as often as they did when Sakaguchi was around, but they still can/will , on the other hand Sakaguchi definitely doesn't have the same quality team in his own company, therefore it'll be more difficult for him to achieve a "SE quality" product.

^ i agree but their projects havent been released yet.

the first HD games were from their enix teams... which sales aren't great but they were released in the 360.
lowest selling console in japan their biggest market.
FF13 , dragon quest 9 are comming this year (i hope) and big teams (FFX team, and level 5).