For me it would have to be my favourite developer of all time Hironobu Sakaguchi. This guy is the father of Final Fantasy, he made the series from the first game back in the 1980s to Final Fantasy X 4 years ago. Unfortunately by then, his role in Square's development of games had deteriorated and his role was more of a producer than a developer. Sakaguchi is the king of RPGs and without a doubt he is the most remembered of the lot. I have a lot to thank him for for creating my favourite game (Final Fantasy VI) as well. Unfortunately now he has left Square but he has founded his own studio named Mistwalker and is currently developing a few games for them, most notably Lost Odyssey which has been brought up in the FFXIII vs Lost Odyssey topic floating around the forums right now. If you want to find out more about Sakaguchi and indeed many more of Square's team past and present; keep checking the Final Fantasy Union for new articles about the famed developers.
Somegamer
Yes, Sakaguchi is a true legend. However, do not underestimate his contributation to the series just because his role changed from Director to Producer. For one, FFVI was greatly directed by him even though he was the Producer. He and Kitase make a great team thus the reason FFVI and FFVII where some of the greatest FF games around in my opinion. In FFVII, he let Kitase direct it because he wanted to learn how to make CG movies. He still contributed greatly to the story and the direction of the game but not as much as Kitase. His main contributation in FFVII was the origin of the story and CG. He had hardly any influence over FFVIII or FFX. He overlooked the production of FFIX and created about 40% of the story of FFIX. FFXII was the last FF game which he was involved in. He only worked on the pre-production of FFXII helping Matsuno develope the game. Also, lets not forget about Chrono Trigger which he was greatly involved in.
Another great developer of Sqaure is Yoshinari Kitase. His best work can be found in FFVI, FFVII, and FFVIII. He directed those games and he did a damn good job on all three of them. However, FFVIII is not praised as much as the other two but I would not blame Kitase for it. I would blame Nojima because he wrote the story of FFVIII which was not well structured unfortunately. Kitase was not involved greatly on the development of FFX. He just overlooked the production and developed the Blitzball game. He is taking a similar role for FFXIII. I hope he will direct a FF game one more time with Sakaguchi, but very unlikely.
Nojima is the main story writer of FF series. He wrote FFVIII, FFX, FFX-2, FFVII: DOC, Crisis Core, Advent Children, Before Crises, and finally FFXIII. Notice that I did not give him credit for FFVII. Though he did participate in writing the story of FFVII with Kitase, I can not give too much credit for it. Because FFVII is unique in the sence that it was written by a lot of people including Sakaguchi, Nomura, Kitase, Nojima, and Kato (Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross writer) and who knows who else contributated.
Next up is Matsuno. No one can write a better story at Sqaure then Matsuno. He did FFTactics, Vagrant Story, and FFXII. Not only did he write the story for those game but he also directed them. Plus Vagrant Story and FFXII both got a 40/40 from Famitsu. Currently his status is unknown. Rumour has it that he left Square and went over to Mistwalker. As for the FFXII sequel, though I believe it is possible, it's very unlikely especially without Matsuno. FFXII is Matsuno's game and I would be damned if somebody took over it and made sequels for it.
There are other important devlopers such as Tabata (FFXI), Ito(FFVI, FFIX), Nomura (KH, KH2, FF Versus XIII), Amano (FF1-FFVI character designs), Motomu Toriyama (FFX, FFX-2, FFXIII director) and of course Nobuo Uematsu. I would go into detail more on all of them but I think this post is long enough. Still, the best way learn about Sqaure's developers is through the GameFaq's boards where all the guru's hang out.
I have to say that I am a little dissapointed that so many of you don't know a few of these great developers such Sakaguchi and Kitase, but oh well.
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