Yasumi Matsuno

Matsuno was subsequently asked to create another scenario, which was titled "Save the Queen: Blades of Gunnhildr" and included in Shadowbringers, another expansion for the game.

[2] He was fond of The Legend of Zelda and Dragon Quest on the Nintendo Entertainment System, and played heavily on the Amiga and PC, including Ultima Online.

[9] Matsuno reportedly was temperamental and refused to come to work for a month after part of the Final Fantasy XII team had left Square Enix to join Hironobu Sakaguchi's new company Mistwalker.

[9][11] In 2006, Matsuno expressed his interest for Nintendo's Wii console in a promotional video, stating that he was impressed with the intuitive functionality provided by the remote controller.

In June 2011, it was announced that Matsuno had entered Level-5 based on his impression of the Professor Layton and Inazuma Eleven series and in order to create the games he wanted to.

[16] During his stay there, he developed the fantasy RPG Crimson Shroud for the Nintendo 3DS, which is part of the collaborative project Guild 01 of Grasshopper Manufacture's Goichi Suda, Sega's Yoot Saito and comedian Yoshiyuki Hirai.

[17] Matsuno left Level-5 in October 2012 and explained "With my work done on the domestic and overseas version of my latest 3DSWare game, it was good timing for me to step down and take a short break in order to recharge for my next project.

"[18] In September 2013, he announced a partnership with the American company Playdek to develop Unsung Story, a strategy game similar to Matsuno's previous titles and set in a medieval fantasy world.

[19] In 2020, Matsuno revealed that he had left the project before it was handed off to Little Orbit, the company currently developing the game; calling Playdek's version a "Final Fantasy clone".

[21] During the Algebra Factory era, he was hired by Square Enix to produce the "Return to Ivalice" raid for the MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV's expansion Stormblood and once more for the "Save the Queen: Blades of Gunnhildr" storyline for the Shadowbringers expansion, and by Cygames Corporation for game drafts and management for the mobile game Lost Order.

He has described the development culture at Quest as having been a "kind dictatorship" while Square's was more "democratic", and is not personally fond of other team members having input on his narrative work.

A 2015 photograph of Akihiro Hino
Akihiro Hino convinced Matsuno to join Level-5 in 2011.