and ports. The 2002 SaGa title Unlimited Saga was designed based solely around Kawazu's tastes, using his position within the company to get his way. The title was divisive, and was the last original SaGa title until the release of SaGa: Scarlet Grace in 2016. He also created the concept for the anime series Final Fantasy: Unlimited during this period, which originally had a narrative link to Unlimited Saga. From 2004 to 2007, Kawazu served as one of Square Enix's board of directors alongside Yoichi Wada and Yosuke Matsuda. He was the only game developer among them, and returned to development following his resignation from the board. During this time, Kawazu acted as executive producer for both the Ivalice Alliance, a series of titles set within the fictional world of Ivalice; and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, a subseries he created through the partially-owned shell company The Game Developer Studio, acting as producer for the first game and executive producer for subsequent entries. For the fifth entry The Crystal Bearers, he acted as a producer and writer. In 2005 he took over as executive producer of Final Fantasy XII after Yasumi Matsuno withdrew. He played a key creative role in The Last Remnant, a standalone RPG designed by veterans of the SaGa series. He also acted as concept creator for It's New Frontier, a life simulator for mobile devices which ran from 2009 to the close of Square Enix's old mobile services in 2018. He currently works as general producer for the SaGa series, serving in an executive role on projects including the mobile spin-offs Imperial SaGa (2015) and Romancing SaGa Re:Universe (2018). Design philosophy and influences Kawazu is noted in his game design for using mechanics seen as unconventional in the RPG genre, such as usage-based ability leveling, non-linear storytelling, and open worlds or similar freely-explorable environments. Speaking specifically about the SaGa series, Kawazu described his philosophy for it as always trying something new with each entry and pushing at the perceived limitations of RPGs. His games are also noted for obscured mechanics and higher-than-average difficulty, something Kawazu ascribes to his love of challenging gameplay. Many of his design sensibilities and game tastes were drawn from Western video games, particularly the Dungeons & Dragons franchise, the video game Wizardry, and the products of Avalon Hill. Unlimited Saga was his most literal expression of this, with mechanics and presentation directly emulating