What are your thoughts on the voice acting?

[Sessurea]

Loved every final fantasy game....until 10.

Anyone wanna guess why?

[Toranja]

The voice actin isn't all that bad. In fact, it is quite good once you close your eyes. The problem lies with the mismatch between the expression in the voice and the cutscene.

[Castillan]

What voice acting? Vast majority of content is silently reading text.

[PuroStrider]

always skip scene crew since launch checking in...

come at me shitty voice actors...

[Chasely]

Loved every final fantasy game....until 10.

Anyone wanna guess why?

Was it the horrible fake laugh scene?

So far I'm preferring the Japanese voice overs. In before someone says its just because I don't understand what they are saying, I don't know any other language except English and the European voice overs don't sound so hot either. Although I think Lahabrea was done pretty well on the English side.

The English voice actors also inflect o n the wrong words. You can tell from the text which words are supposed to gain the most emphasis. There's an early Thancred scene that drives me crazy due to this.

[Krystalmethot]

a couple of the voice overs aren't bad from what i've seen so far. Though im pretty sure that the voice actor for the Admiral in Lim is the same person who did the Knight Commander in DA2

[Sessurea]

Was it the horrible fake laugh scene?

Yuna, Tidus...whole f*ing cast. Wakka xc Series really went downhill from there. Of course not just because of voice acting, but it was a terrible break from tradition. My mind is stained from ff10....

I use jap audio in FF14.

[Stormblossom]

I turned the voice acting over to Japanese preemptively because I knew the English voice acting would be horrible. There's just something about translating things cross-culturally that results in people usually doing a horrid job on voicing. Japanese actors/actresses who do really good voice acting in Japanese market stuff still come out sounding weird when voicing over original English material. The cultural cues on stereotypical and archetypical characters don't help either. The strong androgynous guy with the super deep voice in Japanese context usually ends up with a girly tenor voice because the other combination is 'strange' in Western context. The strong female character with the husky contralto who shows power through the use of masculine word choices doesn't translate across well at all either. Long story short, if you want the voice acting in anything to sound good, go with the language it was originally written and cast for.


(There are not-as-bad exceptions, such as the British voice cast used in Dragon Quest IX, but I'd wager the Japanese voices were still better.)

Sometimes taking something out of cultural context turns it into complete gibberish as well. If I'd known what a Yamato-Nadeshiko was the first time I played FFX, I would have 'gotten' a lot more of what was going on with the dialogue between Tidus and Yuna. He's pissed at her for always putting up the mask, and it's really not clear to the US audience what the mask is, or how glaringly she's doing it. The bad voice actress in the US release compounded the problem - She sounds fake ALL the time, even when she's supposed to be having moments where she's letting her real self slip out, or after she's decided to throw off societal expectations. I recently re-played FFX with Japanese voices and about a decade worth of perspective from studying Japan and Japanese culture, and living here surrounded by it. I actually LIKED FFX this time around. Previously it was my second least favorite after VIII.

[Kat_Manx]

I wish there was no voice acting, except for character screams and grunts and laughs etc.

[Shyluv]

In my head, Thancred's voice sounded something like Troy Baker's. Not exactly like it, but similar.

He sounds like an old man. If he's as old as he sounds, make his face look like it. Unfortunately, hearing his English voice kinda ruined his character for me. Even after switching to JP.