For those of us who prefer the Japanese VO.

[Aeyis]

Wait... How on Hydaelyn can they afford that with Aya Endo and Yuichi Nakamura (just to name the ones I recognised immediately) on the payroll when they can't afford servers which can handle larger inventories? Those two aren't exactly cheap voice actors. Can anyone confirm or deny this?

There is only VO in MSQ related cutscenes. The amount of lines isnt really that much.

[Sylkis]

They chose to localize rather than translate. While the original sentence is sometimes lost, the intent or the general idea still carries over so you get higher quality text. Translations require things like additional text to help with the context (as you see in anime where text appears at the top), and it requires a small amount of JP knowledge for it to be good (e.g. Honorifics are generally left as is in anime, requiring JP knowledge)

With that in mind, localization makes sense and is a better choice for the general population who are only interested in seeing it in their own language.

You can see that Ferne(localization team) has decided to change some things completely for (subjectively) better quality. Midgarsomr is a good example which he made a post on after people noticed that his JP and EN versions are completely different.

[Gunspec]

So did anyone else watching 2.55 in Japanese laugh at some of the absurd lalafell voices? The lalafell in the Crystal Braves had the deepest voice in all of Eorzea. And Tataru's voice at the end made her sound like she was only 5 years old. How can such tiny people have such range of vocal pitch? I expect tiny people to have tiny voices.

[JakzChurchill]

They chose to localize rather than translate. While the original sentence is sometimes lost, the intent or the general idea still carries over so you get higher quality text. Translations require things like additional text to help with the context (as you see in anime where text appears at the top)

How a character interacts with others plays a big part for me in how I perceive them as a character. The best example is at a point during the end of 2.55 Alphinaud say's in Japanese "Thank you, Minfillia". This is short and simple and all that is needed, but in EN localisation changes this to "Your modesty knows no bounds, Antecedent". They've changed everything here, even the name he uses, this for me changes the way I look at the character just through language. And in this situation I prefer how the japanese character talks, taking the VA out of this entirely just speech patterns and social speech the Japanese Alphinaud is a better character to me.

Now I'm not actually biased against the English dub, I have the exact same issue with Steins;Gate but reversed, how the characters act and converse in the Japanese just isn't too my taste whereas the locaclisation creates characters I can enjoy. (PS what anime are you watching that uses additional text? only ever seen little bits in poorly translated manga, usually from manga panda)

[Vilhem]

Spoilers: The story originates in both English and JP, so things like "original" and "dub" need not apply.

[Catwho]

PS what anime are you watching that uses additional text? only ever seen little bits in poorly translated manga, usually from manga panda.

Excel Saga's official translation had "pop up liner notes" as an option that would bloop in to explain some artifact of Japanese culture when necessary.

[FallenArisen0990]

Wow, I now realize thar same recurring theme that's been there the whole time.

[Truga]

I'm a big fan of the Japanese VA's in this game, they made some of my least likeable characters some of my favourite by skewing the characters more towards my likes, Alphinaud being a good example. The problem is it's very obvious the character I am hearing is not the character I'm reading, this makes a very disjointed story experience.

Why are you reading content that is voiced over?

[tymora]

So did anyone else watching 2.55 in Japanese laugh at some of the absurd lalafell voices? The lalafell in the Crystal Braves had the deepest voice in all of Eorzea. And Tataru's voice at the end made her sound like she was only 5 years old. How can such tiny people have such range of vocal pitch? I expect tiny people to have tiny voices.

I went O.O at the Crystal Brave one.

[Nekodar]

I want 4 versions of the text...
English (from english audio)
English (from japanese audio)
English (from german audio)
English (from french audio)