its a good day to be a weeb. Japanese Voice acting is awesome as always

[Cidel]

In the part where the alpaca spits on her, the camera zoomed dramatically and then up the mountain to give extra dramatism.
In JP, she screams.
In EN, she's like "aaaaaah".

The scene called for the over the top acting, it was supposed to be comedic. I don't know what the voice director told her, the direction as a whole was quite questionable...

This isn't the first time this sort of thing about delivery has happened either. One particular scene that often comes to mind is right after you defeat Tsukuyomi and Asahi does his villainous gloating scene. He's half-giddy, half losing-it and his eyes are wide with shrunken irises and is clearly excited at the "catch-22" he thinks he has the WoL in. In Japanese, Asahi raises his voice with barely contained insane glee when he throws up his hands in a Gladiator's "are you not entertained" fashion. In English, it's barely above a calm whisper while performing the same theatrics. And then the part where he throws his head back and laughs while swinging his body around sounds as hammy and comedically insane in Japanese as it looks, while in the English version he can barely let out a raspy chuckle that doesn't match how he's practically convulsing in laughter.

Granted, much later on when Fandaniel reveals he has taken control of his corpse and has that rather one-sided conversation with Zenos, the English version actually redeems himself with his insane laughter at that part when he figures out the remaining Unsundered are no more.

Which leads me to speculate that the Japanese VAs must regularly get much more detailed and accurate info on how their lines are to be read, if not actually presented with the cutscenes they will be voicing... I don't say this to excuse bad voice-acting or miscasts, but there certainly is a noticeably better delivery that makes me wonder if there's disparities in how much the different languages have to work with.

[aTanpopo]

I've played with JP voices since ARR, considered swapping to english after the voice actors got swapped in HW but I'd gotten used to how everyone sounded so decided against it. I appreciate some people just wanna listen without doing a bunch of reading, im the opposite and miss stuff when i don't read subtitles even in english, despite it being my native language lol. Honestly haven't heard the DT voice acting in english yet, but the JP voices sounded great as always.

I think Bakool Ja Ja's VA did a great job (his goofy laugh made me chuckle), and even though I'm not a massive anime watcher Zoraal Ja's VA sounded familiar to me (Daisuke Ono, voice of Jotaro in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure among other things). Also Wuk Lamat's voice and speech style also felt very fitting, very rough and gave her a bit more personality.

The only voice i had issues with sometimes, ironically, was Erenville. Despite him being my favourite character in the expansion his lines felt a little too dramatic in some parts- VA is still great, just the delivery didn't quite fit some scenes imo. That might be more a personal taste thing though and I wouldn't say it ruined anything. Though, hearing that they seemingly forgot to give Cahcuia a matching accent to his EN voice is hilarious to me. How are they gonna explain that one away in lore? He took an eastern viera name and faked the accent for so long that he forgot how to speak american? Can't really say he picked it up from others since its not like everyone in eorzea has an Icelandic accent (are there even any other voiced viera characters outside of the First?) and they paint him as being extremely anti-social. Big oversight on the EN team's side with that one.

[MatthiusAbysswalker]

SpHEeeEEeeNE!

[AngaratoSvartberg]

SpHEeeEEeeNE!

you mean Sven? :P

[FlatLined]

Daisuke Ono was the only saving grace for the MSQ. The writing was bad but hearing him act his heart out was great.

[LilimoLimomo]

I initially played ARR and Heavensward with English voices, and I hated all the characters and the stories.

It was only when I replayed the game in Japanese that I came to truly appreciate some of the stories and characters. I can't overstate how impactful the Japanese voice-acting is at breathing life and personality into characters and moments, nor can I overstate how the flat English voice-acting undermines even well-written portions of the game.

[AngaratoSvartberg]

I initially played ARR and Heavensward with English voices, and I hated all the characters and the stories.

It was only when I replayed the game in Japanese that I came to truly appreciate some of the stories and characters. I can't overstate how impactful the Japanese voice-acting is at breathing life and personality into characters and moments, nor can I overstate how the flat English voice-acting undermines even well-written portions of the game.

agreed. and while the english got alot better over the years in shadowbringers and endwalker the japanese was still way better

haurchefant literally being a completely different character in japanese too. i love him! they really nerfed him hard in english

[Boblawblah]

The Japanese sounds like standard Tokyo Japanese for the most part, which means that most characters end up sounding like generic anime characters, which I'm not a fan of. Combine that with the over the top voice acting and I'm left with a resounding 'meh' feeling. Wuk's English VA wasn't incredible by really any standard, but everyone else is much better imo than their Japanese equivalent. Maybe if I was fluent in Japanese I'd be able to appreciate it more, but I'm a native English speaker, so...

[koichiresh]

I really hate these JP vs ENG VA comparisons, it's like two things can't exist at the same time.

I played the game in English, and in all honesty, a lot of the VAs did an excellent job. Are we really going to pretend there isn't talent in there?

Also, I can never understand the belief that somehow Japanese VAs will always be superior in comparison to other languages like English. If you're one to say this over and over again on various media I would critically examine why that is. In fact, I really appreciate how English varies its utilization of the language depending on where in the world you are. I don't hear any dialects being used at all in the Japanese VA, not to say they are required to do that, but I like the variety utilized in the English version. It gives you a sense of a larger world in my opinion.

[Jojoya]

I tried listening to JP VAs once but the male voices came across as overdramatic and the female voices were mostly babygirl. I just couldn't get into it.

I'm guessing that preferences may differ depending on how much anime one watches. I've watched very little anime so I'm not used to JP voice acting.

Every can choose for themselves. I'm fine with the EN VA for the most part. The only ones I couldn't stand were Yda and ARR Minfilia. I know the original Alphinaud gets hate and yet I think the voice acting fit the character's personality at the time perfectly. That's the important part - is the VA getting the character's personality across to the audience.