He led the development of several titles before helping to create the original Final Fantasy, which proved highly successful and cemented his status within the company.

Following the financial failure of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, his debut as a film director, Sakaguchi withdrew from Square's management and eventually resigned in 2003.

[2] Notable elements of his youth were finding rock samples in a local quarry and gathering a collection of polished stones from an interested geologist and reading through his mother's large library.

They found work with Square, a newly-formed subsidiary of electric power conglomerate Den-Yu-Sha, formed by Masafumi Miyamoto to tap into the emerging video game market.

At this point, Sakaguchi still dreamed of becoming a professional musician but felt that working for a company like Square would provide him with needed programming experience in the meantime.

[3] During his time at Square, he was first involved in an unlicensed adaptation of the television game show Torin-ingen, then later became part of the team for The Death Trap.

This RPG drew inspiration from multiple fantasy titles of the time including The Legend of Zelda, and Origin Systems's Ultima series.

[16] He acted as the producer for the company's PlayStation debut Final Fantasy VII (1997), which proved to be a massive financial and critical success.

[22][28][29][30] Following the failure of The Spirits Within, Sakaguchi was left in a state of low morale, and he decided to step away from active involvement in Square's projects.

[29] While still receiving credits on Final Fantasy, Sakaguchi spent the next three years at his home in Hawaii in a demoralized state, describing himself as "doing nothing" and feeling guilty over his lack of contributions to the industry.

[31][32] He eventually found the motivation to make a return to game production after talking with Toriyama and fellow artist Takehiko Inoue.

These were Blue Dragon (2006), with whom he collaborated with Toriyama and spawned sequels and media spin-offs;[31][33] ASH: Archaic Sealed Heat (2007), a tactical RPG on which he worked with staff from Final Fantasy XII;[37][38] Lost Odyssey (2007), which featured artwork from Inoue and narrative elements by Japanese novelist Kiyoshi Shigematsu;[31][39] and Cry On, a title intended to evoke emotion that was ultimately cancelled in 2008.

[40][41] Sakaguchi returned to a directorial role for The Last Story (2011), which he took as an opportunity to adjust his gameplay approach based on feedback from his earlier titles and to keep up with gaming trends of the time.

[15][42] Following The Last Story, Sakaguchi wanted Mistwalker to focus on smaller mobile projects they could produce in-house on a small intimate team.

[44][45] Terra Battle was a commercial success for the company, prompting Sakaguchi to make plans to release eight games over six years, leading up to his possible retirement age.

With this in mind, he began development of Fantasian (2021), a two-part RPG modelled on Final Fantasy VI with Sakaguchi producing and writing the title for the Apple Arcade service.

[51] Sakaguchi liked the design of the original Dragon Quest, attributing his admiration to its scale and ability to create a long adventure with progress saving on hardware other than PCs.

[7] His favorite game genre is tactical role-playing, though he was unable to lead development on one until Mistwalker's ASH: Archaic Sealed Heat (2007).

[53] His favorite non-RPG title is Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen, which shocked him at the time due to its narrative achievements while being graphically unimpressive compared to Final Fantasy.

[54] During his tenure with the Final Fantasy series, Sakaguchi pushed never to create sequels, which he dislikes as he thinks games should be complete experiences on their own.

[55] He also has mixed opinions on remakes, seeing the positive aspect of giving new players access to older titles, but preferring that developers focus on new projects.

[56] During his early projects, he needed to be careful about hardware limitations when thinking how many characters to include on-screen, but as consoles became more powerful he was able to create what he imagined.