Final Fantasy VII (1997) had him working in the original story alongside Hironobu Sakaguchi, and marked his debut as the lead character designer, a capacity he would retain for several future installments of the series, as well as other Square Enix titles such as The Bouncer and The World Ends with You.
Nomura played Legends of Star Arthur: Planet Mephius on it and started creating his own video games by learning programming.
He first tried a Nintendo product with the tennis and ping-pong variant of the Color TV-Game console and later borrowed a Family Computer in high school.
His art teacher in high school pointed him towards the works of Final Fantasy illustrator Yoshitaka Amano.
While the others typed their plan books at the computer and then printed them out, Nomura wrote his by hand and attached many drawings which impressed director Hironobu Sakaguchi and event planner Yoshinori Kitase.
He then designed characters and monsters for Final Fantasy VIII in what he described as his "actual style of drawing", working alongside art director Yusuke Naora to realize the more realistic approach to the game's graphics.
[10] Additionally, he wrote the character's background stories and was the battle visual director in charge of designing fight sequences.
He worked with the staff so that the characters' clothes would be identical in full motion videos and in-game scenes, unlike in Final Fantasy VIII.
[8] In February 2000, he started working as the director of Kingdom Hearts with the production team consisting of over one hundred members from both Square and Disney Interactive.
[14] Nomura continued his work on the series with Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories for the Game Boy Advance in 2004.
[15] Afterwards, Nomura was the director and lyricist for the CGI animated film Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children which was released in 2005 in Japan.
Nomura joined the film's crew after producer Yoshinori Kitase called him and eventually became the director because of his attachment to the character of Cloud Strife.
As a result of being set a year after previous titles, Nomura was careful to make the plot accessible to newcomers.
[19] After Square Enix had finished development of the updated version Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix, Nomura was approached by Disney which expressed interest in a sequel.
"[20] Wishing to stop using the character of Sora temporarily, Nomura instead wanted to continue the series with games that explained different subplots.
[21] In mid-2007, Nomura mentioned a desire to create a spin-off Kingdom Hearts game on a mobile platform and wanted it to play slightly differently from other titles in the series.
[22] In the meantime, Nomura was also responsible for the main character designs and orchestration of The World Ends with You for the Nintendo DS.
The graphics capabilities of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 compared to previous consoles allowed Nomura to use more complex elements in the character designs than before, such as Lightning's cape and detailed facial features.
The game was originally envisioned by Nomura as a Kingdom Hearts spin-off featuring a cast of Disney characters.
[34][35] Nomura left his position of director on Final Fantasy XV following "changes in development structure" by Square Enix in December 2013.
[8] His four "seniors" Hironobu Sakaguchi, Yoshinori Kitase, Hiroyuki Ito and Tetsuya Takahashi were also described as major influences.