How are the replaced character English VAs in Cold Steel IV?

[etch]

Also, seems a common criticism is about sound quality varying between some VAs likely due to the pandemic and recording setups. Any chance they could touch this up in a later patch for the ports or will they likely not bother?

[Vanquisher]

Yikes, playing Japanese games dubbed? Mega cringe. English voices aren't even folded 100 times.

[Legendary Mr. Tiddles]

Originally posted by Dragon:

Originally posted by Legendary Mr. Tiddles:

300 hours in, I can't even tell that Laura's voice has changed anymore.

You played CS4 for 300 hours?

Ha ha! Yes. This is if you count those times where I fell asleep with the game running. I'm not too busy these days, so I play a little late into the night sometimes.

[Alex]

Originally posted by Phoenix-san:

Lol at people actually using inferior voiceover when the original exists.

Can't agree more with that. Personally I do think translated voiceovers are a waste of time & money. Without them (with only the subtitle translation), release would be a whole hellish lot faster and won't lose anything much because the original 'carefully selected' Japanese VAs acting is much better anyways. Or if they still want to waste money on it, 'releasing game first and VA as paid DLC for those who want it half year later' would have been a good strategy, but alas.

[Legendary Mr. Tiddles]

Because of my proclivities (Samurai Warriors and Yakuza fan right here), and since as a visual person I'd rather read anyway, I have developed an ear for Japanese spoken language, but I still believe there is value in translated voice acting, because some people can just go look elsewhere if they don't agree.

[Drunio]

Originally posted by etch:

Originally posted by Dragon:

You played CS4 for 300 hours?

I can tell Laura's voice changed in CS3 even though it's the same VA from CS1 & CS2. Seems like she had forgotten how to play Laura when she was recording her lines for CS3, or else simply stopped caring and hence "phoned in" her performance.

It's not surprised to see that she didn't bother to come back for CS4.

Laura's VA sounded pretty much the same to me in CS3.

I actually thought it was a different VA until I read this thread. It sounded off to me too.

CS I + II not only had the best voice acting, but the flow of what lines were voiced felt a lot better. CS III / IV sometimes throw in one line randomly to an unvoiced conversation that can break immersion for me. Besides the bad flow though I haven't had issues with any of the voices other than Laura. She sounds really different in a way that makes her feel fake / different.

[KasparL]

LoL of all VA someone picked Osborne and saying the ♥♥♥ one is likely to be way worse than English

see for yourself
https://youtu.be/oW-Rn6kXubA?t=333
(Spoiler alert: final chapter)

Nakata Jōji is one of the top VA in Japan
he has 20+ years of experience and had voiced lots of great games and anime including the Fate series and Resident Evil series

[Bunnyx]

I think that NIS America has serious problems with voice casting. Voice actors in TCS I and II were so great, that for the first time of my life I liked playing japanese games in English. Some of the english voice actors were even better than original ones. But since the third part of these series voice casting became awful. Old class VII is still the same, also I liked voices of Kurt, Ash and Musse and that is all. Tita sounds like an overaged teenager, Yuna is so-so. And this tendency continues in the fourth part. Estelle's voice is so terrible, that I hope I won't see her much in this game. XSEED Games had better understanding of characters than NIS America.

[Sephilar]

My guess is that they just didn't care much this time with the dubbing and the VA were probably paid less than before, as more people prefer the japanese acting than the english dub. I'm pretty sure this must be the case because this also happened with Atelier Ayesha and Atelier E&L. Ayesha had a really good english dub, but in E&L even though the VA of the english dub were still the same, their voice was completely different than before with its quality being completely inferior than in Ayesha. Then after that, Koei just didn't care anymore after everyone always saying they prefer the japanese voice and they haven't care of even putting mediocre voice acting of english anymore in their games.

[Edwardlloyd]

some people are just weebs. but the new osborne and laura voice irritates me because they had such distinct voices. other changes are barely noticablle like mcburn and lechter because they barely spoke anyway.

[Jeffer'son Airship]

Originally posted by The Rollback Carnival:

I'm pretty sure this must be the case because this also happened with Atelier Ayesha and Atelier E&L. Ayesha had a really good english dub, but in E&L even though the VA of the english dub were still the same, their voice was completely different than before with its quality being completely inferior than in Ayesha.

That's because Ayesha wasn't localized by Koei, actually. It was handled by NISA because the translation was done before KT bought GUST. Koei then went slash and burn for maximum profit, hiring a cheaper company that didn't have the same voice direction Ayesha and previous entries did.

Direction is where most voice acting lives or dies and it's really obvious in any language when direction is poor. It happens in Japanese as well, though less often than with English.

Originally posted by The Rollback Carnival:

Then after that, Koei just didn't care anymore after everyone always saying they prefer the japanese voice and they haven't care of even putting mediocre voice acting of english anymore in their games.

They learned they can go minimum effort to max the money returns. It's not that there isn't fan demand for dubs (go to any KT forum and there will be a fairly active thread asking for them) but KT being super cheap.

Their translation quality has overall taken a nosedive as well as they cut more and more corners. It's plain sad to see.

[Stormy Dawn]

Originally posted by Roguey:

Estelle's voice is so terrible, that I hope I won't see her much in this game. XSEED Games had better understanding of characters than NIS America.

... oh the irony.

You do realize that the voice actress for Estelle in Cold Steel IV is the exact same one XSEED had for the Sky games, right? Maybe check up on that before you go saying XSEED has a better understanding and casting direction than NISA.

[Bunnyx]

Originally posted by Tsurayu:

... oh the irony.

You do realize that the voice actress for Estelle in Cold Steel IV is the exact same one XSEED had for the Sky games, right? Maybe check up on that before you go saying XSEED has a better understanding and casting direction than NISA.

Well I ment The ToCS series, not the previous ones, in the first two games VA were much better, than in the last two. And it's not just Estelle. There are many other VA that doesn't suite their characters, it's just that Estelle irritates me more than anyone else (This is my personal issue).
P.S. Previous titles I preferred playing in Japanese, it's only these ones that I liked in English (So I think maybe XSEED have learned their lessons and made a better choise of VA for this game, I don't know, but it doesn't change the fact that VA in the last games sucks.)

[etch]

I actually kind of like a good number of the VAs from the Sky games came back for Cold Steel III & IV even if they only had the battle lines in Sky. Estelle, Joshua, Schera, Kloe, Renne, Josette, and Cassius.

[Israly]

in my opinion, the series has been on english for quite some time and should continue to do so, when arc system didnt dub the last blazblue, they made sure i would never again buy a game from them... im not opossed, if, say, you only include japanese dub from the first entry, but i wont change eng va to japanese va, in the middle series...english i can understand...japanese i dont, thats all i need to know.

[Sephilar]

Originally posted by Mokinokaro:

Originally posted by The Rollback Carnival:

I'm pretty sure this must be the case because this also happened with Atelier Ayesha and Atelier E&L. Ayesha had a really good english dub, but in E&L even though the VA of the english dub were still the same, their voice was completely different than before with its quality being completely inferior than in Ayesha.

That's because Ayesha wasn't localized by Koei, actually. It was handled by NISA because the translation was done before KT bought GUST. Koei then went slash and burn for maximum profit, hiring a cheaper company that didn't have the same voice direction Ayesha and previous entries did.

Direction is where most voice acting lives or dies and it's really obvious in any language when direction is poor. It happens in Japanese as well, though less often than with English.

Originally posted by The Rollback Carnival:

Then after that, Koei just didn't care anymore after everyone always saying they prefer the japanese voice and they haven't care of even putting mediocre voice acting of english anymore in their games.

They learned they can go minimum effort to max the money returns. It's not that there isn't fan demand for dubs (go to any KT forum and there will be a fairly active thread asking for them) but KT being super cheap.

Their translation quality has overall taken a nosedive as well as they cut more and more corners. It's plain sad to see.

Yeah I know that NISA were the ones that started translating Atelier since Iris, but you're right I should have made that more clear, my bad. My point is that companies in general, not just Koei, just don't care about wasting money with english voice acting as much as before. Koei has completely destroyed Atelier since they bought GUST and I'm sure they are to blame for the quality of Atelier in general being so bad since Shallie, but even Koei before becoming so greedy also managed to do good voice acting in english in their games, as one can easily see if you play DW5 for example, with Jiang Wei having there actually the best voice actor he ever had in the series (Joshua Seth).

This goes to show that it's not just that some companies do well their job and others not, but that many companies as I said just don't care anymore, and even though I personally really like some good voice actors like Joshua as I said or Liam O'brien, I can't really complain about the decision of many companies in regards to that in the recent years. Yes sure, you'll always find some niche people playing niche games from america always asking to other companies to include English dub in their games, but that was never as much as people not caring about it or some even complaining about the fact of them having english dubs. And... This thread is actually good proof of what I'm saying. Did you just read the amount of people saying english voice acting is bad or it's stupid to include them in a japanese game here even though this thread wasn't even about discussing this in the first place? lol

So yeah... Just imagine working in some of those companies, be it Koei, ASW, NISA or whatever you want. You're actually wasting money already just for hiring english voice actors even if the contract is with a low budget, but you still do it because you think that's what most people want, just to have countless of these kind of messages thrown to you in emails, Twitter and other social media throwing ♥♥♥♥ about english dubs being bad. Can you really blame them for not caring about even doing english voice acting anymore? As I said before, I actually hate Koei for what has become recently, but as far as this goes, you can't really complain Koei for that but rather the fans if you want. If the demand isn't really higher than the amount of people always throwing ♥♥♥♥ in this matter, there's zero reason for companies to waste money in something most people don't want.