Do you prefer English or Japanese voices in games?

Do you prefer English or Japanese voices in games?

  • English

  • Japanese

Results are only viewable after voting.
Icymanipulator

Icymanipulator

Member
I'm about to start Persona 5 Royal (yes I'm extremely lttp lol) and I almost always choose Japanese voices if the game has an anime aesthetic, but lately the English in many games has been great. I play Genshin, Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero in English, and the last time I played through Tales of Berseria was in English as well because I really liked Velvets VA, though my first play was in Japanese.

Even in fighting games like Street Fighter I tend to use the Japanese voices, although many fighting games now let you change voices on a per character basis which is really nice.

I'm leaning towards Japanese for this game though. I feel like it will fit the game better.

There have been some games where I wanted to choose Japanese but so much of the dialogue would play while I was on a map exploring or doing other stuff and it made it extremely hard to pay attention and catch everything so I was kind of forced to switch to English. So that's a potential issue as well.

Luckily most games let you switch after starting so you're not locked in for the entire playthrough.

Which do you guys generally choose?


EDIT
I decided not to included a middle ground choice to make it more of a "gun to your head, you must choose 1" type of question
 
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That's entirely depends on the setting and quality of the voice.

If game set in Japan like 13 Sentinels or Persona then I will play it Japanese but if game takes place fantasy setting like Metaphor and Xenoblade and English voices well done I will play it in English.

Edit: Rare case when game has its own unique language like wyverian in MH then I choose that.
 
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Yeah, really depends on the game. I don't mind some anime games with English. I think the Persona games have real good VA. Games like Yakuza though just need to be Japanese for me.
 
Depends and there's a limit to my weebness, I'm not going to turn on Japanese voices in a western developed games (unless it's Tsushima) and I'm never playing Disgaea with English voices.
 
Danjin44 said:
That's entirely depends on the setting and quality of the voice.

If game set in Japan like 13 Sentinels or Persona then I will play it Japanese but if game takes place fantasy setting like Metaphor and Xenoblade and English voices well done I will play it in English.

Edit: Rare case when game has its own unique language like wyverian in MH then I choose that.
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Ya for games set in Japan I will 99% choose Japanese
 
English. I want to see what's going on. Can't do that if i'm reading subtitles. But I'm not going to avoid subbed only games or anime, you will miss out on some great stuff if you do.
 
Older stuff japanese voices, newer stuff (past 2-3 years) imo English VA has been consistently better than JP as long as it's well-directed. There's a lot of talent in the English voice acting scene now
 
Always Japanese without second thought- even for HoYoverse games I'll play it in JP dub and I imported Stellar Blade for that. Only for western developed games do I stick to the English since it won't be horrid.
 
If it's a Japanese game, Japanese obviously. The director spent hundreds of hours directing the cast to make the right intonations, it would be like throwing a quarter of the game experience down the toilet.
 
Usually English. The only time I change it is when the voice acting is so bad, it's more distracting than hearing them talk in a language I don't understand.
 
If the game is Japanese then it's always going to be Japanese a lot of western voice acting is pure dogshit rarely do i hear characters in english that don't make my ears bleed because they are so badly cast for that character. Not everything has to sound like a over the top saturday morning cartoon.
 
I am not crazy enough to play a game in a language i dont understand and i will never understand why someone would choose to do that other than learning it, ive only ever made a half-exception once by installing a mod that replaces Yong Yea as Kiryu with the JP voice actor, but thats just one character in a game.

I always pick english over my native language too since even when its bad theyll still have the better actors.
 
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I don't understand Japanese. I'll always prefer to use my senses and hear sounds I understand. I like Japan's exported media, but I'm not on their culture's nuts that much where I'll choose to look at subs when I have an English option.
 
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Always japanese with subtitles. Thank god fans undubbed games along the years.

There are a few exceptions like Metal Gear that english is the "original" or for example Metro games i played them all in Russian.
 
The only games I've played in Japanese were Nioh 1 and 2, Sekiro, and Ghost of Tsushima, since they're all set in Japan. I try to play games with voice acting in their native language, e.g. Kingdom Come in Czech, the Metro series in Russian, etc.
 
Depends on the game. Like, I wouldn't use Japanese voices in Metro Exodus. But for most games made in Japan, absolutely.
 
Always Japanese. English dub for most Japanese games are always cringy for me, especially for anime style games. There are rare exceptions.
 
English unless you wanna pretend you speak Japanese.

If you have no functional reason to speak Japanese have a word with yourself nerd.
 
I do Japanese for yakuza because I started playing them before they did English dubs. It just doesn't sound right when I switch to English because of that. I usually use English otherwise.
 
Wonko_C said:
Making "realistic" cat noises is cringe AF IMO. I'll stick to JP dubs just ending phrases with "~nya" (which not even sounds cat-like, just cute), thanks.
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Sure, that's your preference which is fine. But the issue with English dubs in the past were that they just didn't have any acting talent, weren't professional actors or just phoned it in. There's catgirls that do the -nya in English too. The point is that we actually have good voice actors now, not just some rando they found in the office.
 
ap_puff said:
Sure, that's your preference which is fine. But the issue with English dubs in the past were that they just didn't have any acting talent, weren't professional actors or just phoned it in. There's catgirls that do the -nya in English too. The point is that we actually have good voice actors now, not just some rando they found in the office.
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Sure, English voices have gotten a lot better. If you asked me a few years before the launch of FF VII Remake I would have chosen JP voices without thinking. But I liked the English dub a lot. I think they finally nailed a style for anime-like dubs that doesn't sound like they're trying too hard and which fits better to the English language.

It's just the noises I have an issue with. Thankfully I don't have to hear the police mascot from Zenless Zone Zero purring again... for now. (She doesn't do that in the JP dub) All I could think of was Boss Nass from Star Wars Episode 1 shaking his head while flinging spit all over, that's only funny to three year olds.
 
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Wonko_C said:
Sure, English voices have gotten a lot better. If you asked me a few years before the launch of FF VII Remake I would have chosen JP voices without thinking. But I liked the English dub a lot. I think they finally nailed a style for anime-like dubs that doesn't sound like they're trying too hard and which fits better to the English language.

It's just the noises I have an issue with. Thankfully I don't have to hear the police mascot from Zenless Zone Zero purring again... for now. (She doesn't do that in the JP dub) All I could think of was Boss Nass from Star Wars Episode 1 shaking his head while flinging spit all over, that's only funny to three year olds.
Click to expand...

Even though I didn't care for the FF7 remake games, the English voices were great imo, very well done and they all fit the characters.

Except Red XIII is forever ruined for me now.
 
I'm not a native English speaker, so when I was younger I always chose playing with Japanese voiceover. However, with time and age, I started preferring playing games in English (even when there are Spanish v/o options available), mostly because I like the language and also because, in more action oriented Japanese games (e.g Final Fantasy VII Remake and Final Fantasy XVI) I have no time to be chaining commands while reading the subtitles for a language I understand very little of like Japanese. We are lucky that the English localization has improved a lot since the old days.

Also, something to note: I was fine with this when I was younger, but as I grew older I started getting tired of the high-pitched female voices Japanese voiceover tend to prefer, even if the character isn't a child anymore. I know it's a cultural thing, but as a Western guy, I really, *really* prefer hearing a normal-pitched female voice rather than something more child-like regarding women (e.g. JRPGs like Scarlet Nexus, .hack, and the like; also, this was one of the failures from the Final Fantasy XIII localization back in the day. Remember Vanille?).
 
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Going back several years and it would be a toss up between which to choose.

These days English VO's are good enough and I default to that. Cba to read to understand what is going on and miss out on dialogue when not translated; like speech and banter in and out of battles or npc's randomly talking. In ARPG's like the new FF's this is definately noticable.
 
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Depends, but mostly English. Often times I find the hate towards English dubs to be really overblown. I have heard from a couple people who are actually Japanese that most Westerners don't seem to understand that a lot of times even the Japanese dub can be pretty terrible, it's just that they have no idea because they're not native speakers, so they think it's great.

Ignorance is bliss I guess.
 
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