What do Takahashi fans think of Yasumi Matsuno?

Tetsuya Takahashi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yasumi Matsuno - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So of course people know the name Kitase and (shudder) Toriyama and maybe a few others but if you're gonna be a pretentious fop and start talking about which JRPGs have the best-written and deepest stories/characters, you're almost guaranteed to hear a ton of votes from similarly elitist snobs who say "Xeno-something" or "anything by Matsuno".
(Takahashi's name isn't quite as well known but everyone knows his various brainchildren)

Anyway, it got me thinking. I loved FFXII and while that wasn't exclusively done by Matsuno, I've heard it bears several of the hallmarks of his genius. I've also often heard Vagrant Story listed right up there with Xenogears for Best Plot in a JRPG.

And so the topic at hand. How would people here compare the two? Would you say Matsuno is almost as good or that the two excel in different areas and can't comparable or what? I am gonna start playing Vagrant Story for the first time in a moment so maybe in a week or two I can offer up some ideas on this but until then I wanted to hear all your guys' takes on this.

So definitely both guys have their own distinctive styles in narratives. I can't say which one I prefer as a whole mainly since Xenogears and Vagrant Story are two completely different experiences and even with these guys' histories their genres are completely different. I mean, how do you compare if you like high fantasy vs sci-fi?

If I had to compare them somehow though, I'd say that I like the fact Matsuno doesn't fill in every blank for you or spoon-feed you answers through text/cutscenes. Vagrant Story is a pretty good example of it when it almost straight up tells you, "Yeah you're gonna need to draw your own conclusion k". Both guys have a really interesting understanding of character but I think Matsuno does it in a more understated way whereas Takahashi is more open about a character's depth? Like for me when I was running through FF12 and Tactics, I felt like character expression was a lot more subtle but still easy to pick up...like through body language. It could be partly because of the styles they presented their respective games, but you don't get much body language in XS3 for example, since everyone has the same couple of gestures that get recycled during the text cutscenes (the ones when it's just talking heads?). Especially in 12 since my memory only really clicks in with that since for some reason I can't remember anything about Ogre Battle. Anyway. I'll just remphasize I can't really compare both people since they're essentially creative badasses in their respective fields. They have their own way of going about things, and it's hard to objectively compare them without getting into a preferences battle.

I've been a pretty big fan of Vagrant Story since it came out, so even though Gears and Saga will always be my faves, Matsuno is pretty kickass. I often find that Matsuno sets out to tell stories that are shorter, but still pretty complex. Nowhere near as complex as Gears, though.