Character Dialogue

[Dark Sun Gwyndolin]

I was reading the PC Gamer review of VC, and it mention that your soldiers have incidental dialogue that expands their personality, especially when near friends. I've been playing with the Japanese voices so far, but will I need to use the English voices to get the full effect out of this feature?

[hghwolf]

You could also learn moonspeak.

[landman]

Their in-combat phrases are not subtitled so yes, you need to play in a language you understand. But Jann sounds gay whatever language you are playing lol

[ThreeSon]

I wouldn't worry too much about it. Yeah, you won't be able to understand the little exclamations and taunts they give in battle, but if you try a few of the missions with English voices, you'll learn quickly that: A) They're not really saying anything of substance, just basically what you'd expect. And also B) The English voice acting is so bad that you can tolerate a little bit of lost info.

[Dark Sun Gwyndolin]

I have certainly noticed that when a game offers both English and Japanese voice acting, JP is generally the way to go, Blazblue: Continuum Shift being the sole exception I've played. But yeah, English voice acting in JRPG's generally sucks (seriously, Xenoblade Chronicles on Wii. The game was stellar, EXCEPT for the English voice acting.).

[landman]

Both dubs are great IMO, and english is not my mother language so I don't have any preferences over one or the other.

[Turtler]

The English VA in this game is very good. They pretty much nailed the approaches they were going for. And frankly, the prejudice against non-Japanese dubs has become less and less true as time goes on at a pretty steady pace. Black Lagoon in particular is one anime where I would suggest even Japanese audiences watch it with the English Dub and Japanese Subs. So I would suggest playing VC1 with English, or at laest consider.

As for the little snippets of quotes though... they're not overwhelmingly much. Small sound bites that trigger when you hit a potential, hit an enemy, or just get hit. Things that'll give some more flavor and character (especially to secondary characters who don't get any otherwise). But not something that will make or break your game.

[spanner_monkey]

Probably just a matter of which dub you hear first at any length. Then you think of those voices as the true voice of the character, and hear someone else and it seems wrong.

Happened to me with Cowboy Bebop; saw it subbed with Japanese VA, then later watched the movie with an English dub and I torrented the original audio version in a hurry like I had just heard the Das Boot english dub.

Look at the English VA list for VC. They're all good.

People say the same thing about FF13 because they heard the Japanese audio first, and I want to laugh. Ali Hillis, Troy Baker, and Laura Bailey are suddenly bad VAs? Next I'll be hearing claims about how terrible Jennifer Hale is.

About the only modern games I'd say that have significantly better VA in a non-English language are Metro 2033 and Last Light with Russian VA. You miss a lot of unsubbed dialog though.

[ThreeSon]

No, it's not a result of me being biased towards whatever actors I heard first. I originally played the game with the English actors, but after about 10 minutes I determined that they were almost universally terrible or mediocre, so I switched to subbed Japanese and learned I was correct.

[spanner_monkey]

It's usually more about forming attachments.

Are you really going to be emotionally attached to the character VAs after 10 minutes, especially if you're already thinking about being able to change them?

Laura Bailey, Fred Tatasciore, Steve Blum, etc just aren't seen as terrible or mediocre VAs. Bet if you look, you probably even like them in other roles.

Kind of like the endless Demon's Souls vs. Dark Souls debates. It always comes down to which one you played and got attached to first. Still, you can't convince everyone of that.

Ultimately, yes, it's subjective, but there is general consensus. Cowboy Bebop's english dub is regarded as being excellent; Das Boot's english dub is regarded as poor. And the consensus on Valkyria Chronicle's english dub is that it's quite good.

Doesn't mean you have to like it. I can't stand Cowboy Bebop's english dub, but the VA/direction is not at fault like with Das Boot. It's that it sounds wrong after getting attached to the Japanese VAs for the characters. (Jet and Faye in particular)

Consider it.

[ThreeSon]

引用自 spanner_monkey：

It's usually more about forming attachments.

Are you really going to be emotionally attached to the character VAs after 10 minutes, especially if you're already thinking about being able to change them?

I'm not emotionally attatched to them. I wasn't particularly moved by any of the Japanese actors either, but their performances - particularly for Alicia and Varrot - were unquestionably far better to my ears.

引用自 spanner_monkey：

Laura Bailey, Fred Tatasciore, Steve Blum, etc just aren't seen as terrible or mediocre VAs. Bet if you look, you probably even like them in other roles.

"Aren't seen as terrible or mediocre" by whom? I have no idea if they are good actors. I don't judge a performance based on what that actor's reputation is. I judge it based on whether it's a good performance or not.

And it's not exactly unusual for otherwise talented actors to give bad performances. Since all of the English voice actors sounded terrible to me, I'm inclined to believe it is more the result of a bad voice director. The casting director should share some blame also, for Welkin's actor in particular. He sounds like he's 40 years old.

引用自 spanner_monkey：

Ultimately, yes, it's subjective, but there is general consensus. Cowboy Bebop's english dub is regarded as being excellent; Das Boot's english dub is regarded as poor. And the consensus on Valkyria Chronicle's english dub is that it's quite good.

That seems silly to me. You are literally the very first person I've heard claim that the English voices are better. Can you point to a place online that demonstrates this "consensus" you claim has been reached?