Longtime Square Enix producer Yoshinori Yamagishi has announced his retirement from the company he has worked for over two decades. He cited wanting to work on new games as his reason for leaving on his Twitter account.

This may be sudden, but I, Yamagishi, have resigned from Square Enix on March 31. Therefore, I’m retiring my role as Valkyrie Anatomia’s producer! I’m thinking about working on a new game with a different company, so I hope to have your support when the time comes. As for the announcement being on April 1st… I’ll let you decide to believe this or not.

A long line of cult-hits and backdrop games

During his twenty years at Square Enix, Yamagishi primarily worked with tri-Ace to make the Star Ocean and Valkyrie Profile games. He is listed as producer on Star Ocean, the series’ best Star Ocean: The Second Story, Star Ocean: Til the End of Time, and Star Ocean: The Last Hope as well as Valkyrie Profile and Valkyrie Profile 2. It’s worthing pointing out that he was not the producer for the most recent Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness, but he did work on several other tri-Ace games including Radiata Stories.

His credits with Square Enix date al the way back to the Super Famicom days of Dragon Quest III, V, and VI.

While he never had a runaway success with the company on the levels of Final Fantasy, Star Ocean: The Second Story and Valkyrie Profile remain masterpieces of Square Enix’s library and will keep his name popular among Square Enix fans for years to come. Best of luck to wherever he lands.