FF was Tanabe's baby through and through. All the bad decissions of that game come from him directly and Next level games were just doing grunt work.
When Next level games (and retro in older cases with Tanabe, and actually the majority of games released by studios working with Nintendo, were he is just a simple producer) are left with creative freedom you can see a bunch of interviews with the directors and leads of the games, with tanabe overseeing them. When Tanabe is the only one who talks, were he jas the main idea and then looks for a team to amke what he wants, like happened with FF by NLG, MPH by NTS and mp4 by namco singapour, were he is the mouthpiece of every article released of the gane, or cases were the press had to actually look for which team he was working for, because Tanabe never wants to say it, he is a producer acting as a director and he is demonstrating again and again thats bad news. See the diference also with Sakamoto doing the same with other M and team ninja, and actually leaving the director of Samus Returns talk on interviews with him this time. And Sakamoto is a thousand times better creative person than Tanabe.
So dont shit over NLG, they are an awesome studio that had the displeasure of working with Tanabe on a forced game with his shitty ideas (something that retro has talked about in some interviews in the past, i think it was the mp3 iwata asks were they say the have to somewhat play with some of Tanabe's absurd ideas, in fact Tanabe says that yep, he does that to see what sticks), instead of tanabe just acting as a producer and them doing all creative work as in the mario strikers games, punch-out!! Luigis mansion 2 and now 3.
The only thing that tanabe has going for him is that he actually owned the fault of him thinking FF was a good idea by making the infamous video explanation after the deserved uproar. But that also demonstrates he is not good with lead creative decissions now.
If sylux is nowhere to be seen or doesnt act as the main villain of the game in retro's version of MP4, you will see who actually got the complete creative reigns of the games, because from what Tanabe has said multiple times, is what he wanted MP4 heading to. And the less input he has over the games the best for all of us.
