Hiroki Kikuta is a self taught music composer who wrote the music for
Secret of Mana 1 and 2, also known as
Seiken Densetsu 2 and
Seiken Densetsu 3. According to an interview, he was hired by
Nobuo Uematsu, and had only two weeks to write all of the music in Seiken Densetsu 2! I think he was given more time to write for Seiken Densetsu 3 because that game's music is more varied. For example, SD2 has 50 themes in all, 3 of which are for bosses. SD3 has 69 themes, 11 of which are for bosses.
After SD3, the Seiken Densets team left
Squaresoft and broke up to form
Brownie Brown with the programmers and artists, and Hiroki Kikuta on his own. With the help of
SNK he formed
Sacnoth and was in charge of
Koudelka and
Shadow Hearts.