English vs Japanese voiceover discussion

EbrietasSs

La-da-di-dum!
I am a big big fan of the English voiceover in the Soulcalibur series. It's probably the only Japanese game where I will pick English over the original version. There are many reasons for this, in some characters' cases superior voice acting that gives them tons of personality, compared to the Japanese one (for example Azwel, Yoshimitsu, Tira, among others). I understand that some of these characters are voiced by seiyuu legends, such as Wakamoto Norio, but in many cases the Japanese one just sounds like some generic anime. The lines from the characters are more serious in the JP version, making the game less funny and enjoyable and some voices I feel simply feel don't fit the characters at all (Tira's JP voice is simply annoying to me and doesn't suit her appearance or behaviour). To add to that, fighting some of the girls in JP version sounds almost like watching a hentai anime, so hard pass, it's just gross. All this while the English voiceover is full of ridiculous stuff and is very unique, giving the game an entirely different feel.

I'd like to hear your thoughts about this, I'm interested in why you would pick one version over the other
 
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I've had it set to Japanese since day one. I was already sick of the English voices by the time the game came out because it was used in all the videos online prior to release.

I agree that the English voice acting is good in this game compared to a lot of other fighting games. But that said, I still find a lot of it sounds forced and unnatural which really grates on me after a while.

I kind of prefer the more serious tone of the jap VA but I'll probably give the English a go some time soon for the sake of variety.
 
I usually like Japanese, in this game English is tolerable. When English voiceovers aren't bad I switch to English because of the added meaning that I don't get with Japanese. Both are very close but I prefer English an inch more in this game since it's not bad. Some things are cringey like Xianghua, but I bet if I understood Japanese there would be some cringey things also.
 
I am a big big fan of the English voiceover in the Soulcalibur series. It's probably the only Japanese game where I will pick English over the original version. There are many reasons for this, in some characters' cases superior voice acting that gives them tons of personality, compared to the Japanese one (for example Azwel, Yoshimitsu, Tira, among others). I understand that some of these characters are voiced by seiyuu legends, such as Wakamoto Norio, but in many cases the Japanese one just sounds like some generic anime. The lines from the characters are more serious in the JP version, making the game less funny and enjoyable and some voices I feel simply feel don't fit the characters at all (Tira's JP voice is simply annoying to me and doesn't suit her appearance or behaviour). To add to that, fighting some of the girls in JP version sounds almost like watching a hentai anime, so hard pass, it's just gross. All this while the English voiceover is full of ridiculous stuff and is very unique, giving the game an entirely different feel.

I'd like to hear your thoughts about this, I'm interested in why you would pick one version over the other
I pretty much share your sentiments. The personalities of the characters come to life in the English version.

The Japanese is your standard fair. I.dont see enough uniqueness to the voicing from anime characters.
Maybe sophitia but that's it.
 
I usually like Japanese, in this game English is tolerable. When English voiceovers aren't bad I switch to English because of the added meaning that I don't get with Japanese. Both are very close but I prefer English an inch more in this game since it's not bad. Some things are cringey like Xianghua, but I bet if I understood Japanese there would be some cringey things also.
The way I see Xianghua is that she is completely aware of how annoying she sounds, thats why you have those finger pokey and buttslapping moves, along with crybaby. Sounding this cringy is part of her personality to me xD
 
I usually have the voices in English but in SC IV I had it set to Japanese. Yoshimitsu's voice is not bad in Japanese, but I've grown fond of his English voice since SC II.
 
I switched it to Japanese-- not because the English dub was bad, but because I'm maining Mitsurugi and there's a ton of Asian characters around in the game, but I get an overall heavy anime influence off the Western characters. Not including Geralt of course.

It's my first Soul Calibur proper so that might affect my opinion.
 
The Japanese voices sound midly annoying. Those squeeky screaming from the females... big nope. ✋
 
I honestly think that especially nowadays japanese performances are actually mediocre, they don't really try to emulate a character just a trope and stereotype it gets old pretty quick and is grating. They've really got no sense of balance when it comes to vocal direction in my opinion and are just on bouncing from extremes constantly. Though that is more of a thing they've done lately rather than in the past I'd say.

In SCVI's case I think its relatively obvious English is the way to go, no matter how clunky one may find it.

A game I did enjoy the JP performances for in particular is DOA, even nowadays they seem fairly fine to me.
 
Yeah, Geralt's Japanese voice is cringey, but it's a thing I'm willing to endure as the rest of the Japanese lines are really great. I don't understand much, and the English lines are genuinely well made, but, well, I still prefer the Japanese ones; they're the ones the team behind the game had in mind when creating the characters.
Still, I should play with the English dub voices sometimes, as - something rare enough to be praised, although it should be an industry standard - these voices do sound like they could come from people who look like this.
 
I kinda wish the games allowed something that like UMVC3 had, where you could have certain characters speak certain languages. While I think both voice-overs are pretty good, I usually lean more toward the english voices. Especially in the case of Say Soul Calibur 2 and Soul Calibur 3. Crispin Freeman as Seigfried is just too good not to hear imo. Gotta get back on that muffled voice dub that Virtua Fighter 5 had though Kappa.
 
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