While perhaps not as popular in the West as the likes of, say, Tetsuya Nomura and Nobuo Uematsu, Kazushige Nojima has made a name for himself as the writer of several acclaimed Square Enix titles. His contributions to the Final Fantasy series (namely Final Fantasy VII and its spin-offs, Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy X, and Final Fantasy X-2) as well as the mainline Kingdom Hearts games have cemented him as one of the most prolific writers in Japan’s video game industry.
In response to a local Japan survey conducted by Denfaminicogamer on which RPGs made players cry the most, Nojima was delighted that four of the games he worked on made the top 40 list. These include the top 1 and 2 spots (Final Fantasy X and Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII respectively), as well as the titles in the 24th (Final Fantasy VII) and 33rd (Kingdom Hearts II) places. Nojima also provided the original story outline for Final Fantasy XV, which took 10th place.
Though Nojima left Square Enix in 2003 to found Stellavista – a freelance scenario company – he is regularly brought on board by his former employers to write for new projects. His most recent work for Square Enix was Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, which he joined as lead scenario writer.
With over 4,700 participants in the Denfaminicogamer survey, it’s quite refreshing to see a mix of old and new games in the tear-jerking RPG list. The term “RPG” seems to be used loosely, however, as titles such as Okami and NieR: Automata – which feature elements of the genre but aren’t exclusively RPGs – are included in the list. For those curious, the full top ten are: FFX, Crisis Core: FFVII, Persona 3, Okami, Mother 3, Tales of the Abyss, Dragon Quest XI, FFIX, Suikoden II and FFXV.
