while I appreciate the choice..and even use the japanese voices a lot..

seriously..most japanese voice actors are just as shitty if not worse.

Course thats desirable in certain genres like super robot wars where you want the corny jacked up to the max..but eh.

@ Steve: Amen sister.

Almost always Japanese since the origonal director will have worked with those actors. I don't get why you would prefer English in a French setting.

I usually prefer Japanese voices, but if I hear the English VA FIRST and BEFORE I hear the Japanese VA, I tend to have a much more favorable impression of it when comparing the two. For example, I'd prefer Persona 4's JP and EN voiceover in equal measure, since I've heard both and can appreciate them both.

Chie sounds great on both sides, but at the same time I prefer Rise's English voice because I've never really liked the high-pitched screeching of anime idol characters (I could barely tolerate Akira Kogami in Lucky Star, for example. It also helps that Atlus is really great at localization.

On the other hand, I didn't like Valkyria Chronicles' English VA because I took the fool step of picking JP first, and now know that captain Varrot is voiced by Atsuko Tanaka, who is the sexiest female voice this side of Jennifer Hale.

Incidentally, I also prefer Metal Gear Solid's English VA.

As an anime fan, I wuv me some subtitles, but I'm not a fucking "OOO KAWAII" animu nut. If the dub is good, I'll listen to it (GREAT example of a sick superior dub: Cowboy Bebop, Metal Gear Solid).

@ unangbangkay
I'm of the opinion that as long as the director/producer of the anime supervises the dub, and his vision isn't wrecked in the dubbing process, it's ok. Sometimes they just change it way too much: I believe that films of any genre should try to be seen the way the creator intended it to be shown for the best effect.

I prefer English voices. I hold the belief that the Japanese voice work is probably bad too, we just don't know it because we don't speak it.

As far as Phantom Brave goes, this will be a nice option for EUR peoples who were stuck with a half-arsed release from Koei.

Fuckin' A

<i>With a lot of J-RPGs, there tends to be the problem of mediocre voice acting a lot of the time -- similar to the US anime industry. I can't be surprised, seeing as the actors don't get paid SAG rates because the companies are too small to afford them, so they have to work with smaller, non-guild actors.</i>

The issue of mediocre voice acting in JRPGs (and games in general) has very little to do with the project's union status. A lot of VO actors work on both types of gigs, so it's not as though there are two totally distinct talent pools. When a game's spoken dialogue fails, it's usually because the actors were required to read their lines without benefit of any sort of in-the-moment context.

Example: "I don't think we're going to get it in time."

What's the antecedent of "it"? What's the proper delivery? Sad? Spiteful? Angry? Wry? The actor doesn't know, very often their lines have been culled out of the larger script so they can't even glance at the loops above or below for hints, and they slow down the session asking for clarification at their own peril. Time is money, so goes the cliche, and in a game recording session, that clock is always ticking.

@ unangbangkay

I personally think dubbing is the way to go when it comes to games like this.