Hiroki Kikuta was born on August 29, 1962, in Aichi Prefecture. He studied Religious Studies, Philosophy, and Cultural Anthropology at Kansai University. Before he ever touched a game, he worked as a manga illustrator. Then he composed music for anime series. Music was something he could do, and he did it well.
In 1991, Square hired him not as a composer but as a sound manager. His first assignment was designing sound effects for Romancing SaGa. Then they asked him to compose the music for a game called Secret of Mana. It was 1993. The game was released for the Super Famicom, and the music became known around the world. The soundtrack sold separately. People who had never touched the game bought the album. Kikuta had written something that existed beyond the game itself.
He followed it with Trials of Mana in 1995, then Soukaigi in 1998. By then, he had become one of Square's recognized composers. But composition, by itself, was no longer enough. He wanted to build the entire experience — the story, the vision, the shape of the game from the ground up. He did not want to write music for someone else's world. He wanted to design the world.
In August 1997, with financial backing from SNK, Kikuta founded a company called Sacnoth. He took the position of CEO. The company's first project was a horror RPG called Koudelka, set in a ruined monastery in Wales at the end of the nineteenth century. Kikuta was not only the composer. He was the designer, the scenario writer, the producer, and the director of the CG movies. He held every role he had wanted to hold.
Koudelka was released in 1999 for the PlayStation. The reviews were mixed. The market response was poor. The game did not sell. Shortly after, Kikuta resigned as CEO. The company continued without him, later becoming known under a different name and producing the Shadow Hearts series — games that carried forward some of what Koudelka had tried, but without Kikuta involved.
In March 2001, Kikuta founded Norstrilia, a private record label. He returned to composing music for games, working as a freelance composer on various projects. He was back to writing soundtracks — the work he had left Square to move beyond. Whether this was a step backward or forward is not something sources clarify, and Kikuta himself has not framed it that way in interviews. He simply returned to the work he knew how to do.
Secret of Mana was remade in 2018, more than twenty years after the original. All the music was newly arranged under Kikuta's supervision. In interviews about the remake, he spoke about the original compositions with care and precision, as someone who still remembered every intention behind every note. The man who had wanted to do more than compose had, decades later, returned to supervising the same music he had written when composition felt too small.
He is still working. He composes for games, releases albums through his own label, and occasionally speaks about his past work in interviews. The question he faced in 1997 — whether being good at one thing means you should only do that one thing — never received a clear answer. He tried to answer it by building a company, designing a game, and taking on every role he thought he needed. The attempt failed. He went back to music. Whether that means the question was answered, or simply that some questions do not have answers, is left for each person to decide.