Akihiko Yoshida's influence comes through in some of the new gear.

[Lusavari]

Tactics Ogre Dragoon:



HW DRG set:



-----

Tactics Ogre Rogue



Monk Set



----------------------

Archer (Note Female)



Bard Set



I always loved Yoshida's style.

[Cyrus-Wallace]

I always prefered his designs over Nomura's designs. I love to see his influence here.

[Marxam]

I always prefered his designs over Nomura's designs. I love to see his influence here.

Nomura is very "Anime-centric" with his designs as all his characters look almost the same or follow some anime sterotype. He's not bad but I do prefer Akihiko Yoshida or even Yoshitaka Amano due to their relative simplicity and subtle tones.

[Balipu]

Nomura is very "Anime-centric" with his designs as all his characters look almost the same or follow some anime sterotype. He's not bad but I do prefer Akihiko Yoshida or even Yoshitaka Amano due to their relative simplicity and subtle tones.

Yoshitaka Amano? Simplicity. Aaaaaahahahahahahahahaha. No.
Sorry, I don't want to offend, but Yoshitaka Amano's drawings are anything but simple. That's the very reason SE switched to Nomura for the 3D era. And say what you will of the man, but he designed some of the most iconic figures in Final Fantasy. If you type Final Fantasy into the google image search the results are almost exclusively characters designed by Nomura. However, his style is more modern than what would be apropriate for Ishgard.
But Akihiko Yoshida's style fits perfectly.

[Lusavari]

More to come with edits. I'm painstakingly making comparisons.

[Airget]

That's pretty wicked. Granted I know this doesn't pertain to "gear" but the changes to Bard with the charging skills I believe is a nod to FF Tactics and the archer skills which had charge times to activate based on range of attack.

[Lusavari]

Personally, I'm really hoping to see a lot of the NPC styles from TA: LUCT make it in. I rather liked Dame Ravness and Denem's styles. Akahiko Yoshida has beautiful designs.

[Kio]

*snip pretty pictures*

Neat! I would have never made this connection, thanks for posting this!

[Tanama]

I pretty much jumped out of my seat in excitement when I saw the Tactics Ogre Dragoon armor. I really, really hope they continue this trend of bringing back older armor designs by Akihiko Yoshida. I absolutely love his work!

[Noxifer]

I pretty much jumped out of my seat in excitement when I saw the Tactics Ogre Dragoon armor. I really, really hope they continue this trend of bringing back older armor designs by Akihiko Yoshida. I absolutely love his work!

Though maybe not with the gender differences shown in the image you posted XD

Other than that, I agree completely =D Even though the picture is a tad on the small side to be able to see details, they look really nifty ^_^
(Though I have to confess I accidentally managed to read the class name from the row below the pictures XD found myself looking at the berserker set, then down at ninja/kunoichi, then back up at the set, then down at the class name, going "that's a mighty weird armour for a ninj....oh.")