I actually think Hifumi sounds fine and can't really hear Marie in it unless I listen closely.
Yeah, don't get me wrong: if this was Riegel's first Persona role, I'd be all for the casting. She fits the character really well, but it's hard to distance her from such a major role in the series.
https://youtu.be/xCTcUUYCoBk?t=12m55s
This is the reason why some things about the Persona series' English voice acting can be pretty jarring, from changes between games, to clear reuse for other characters, to pre-release media to original Fuuka.
You can't disassociate a voice from their character. I see that Spider-Man PS4 trailer and my first thought is that Yosuke got himself a costume and moved to New York
It's a bit disquieting when it's for a series where the characters are so important.
Maybe I'm weird, but I actually don't mind some actors being prolific, even if they regularly use the same voice. Like, I think Lowenthal's one of the absolute best actors in the business, but he's notorious for having a very small vocal range. It gets to the point where I see people bemoan
anyone with a tenor voice, just because they think it's him. Meanwhile, I'm just eating up whatever he says, because his emotional fidelity is so good.
But the Persona series is in such a unique but weird spot right now. It's a long-running series, each entry packed with an ensemble cast, limited to using nonunion talent each time. That would be a nightmare for a lot of casting directors, but then the series goes on to establish more world building, bringing all of the settings and characters even closer together. Suddenly casting choices that were made half a decade ago because they made sense get put under more scrutiny because the English casting directors couldn't predict all of these characters interacting with each other. It's also so character-driven and has been so grounded in the past that each character's guaranteed to be liked/or relatable to someone.
So with all of this world-building all of these character dynamics and audience investment running amok pressure cooked for eight years, the littlest thing can undermine the series' world integrity. That can happen through writing or presentation or a lot of things, but often it comes through the voice, just because they are so core to the characters who are the face of the series. And it's just so easy to pick up on. I've never cared that Atlus has used a lot of the same actors across various SMT games, but within each series each individual world hearing two different people talk with the same voice kills any credence. I'm no longer an enrapt audience; I'm a critic, judging each niggling inconsistency I would've ignored before. I'm ignoring the emotional forest for the technical trees.
I think it's interesting that HDD brings up Star Wars fans, because they've become such a parody of themselves at this point. But it, just like any good character-driven series, effortlessly makes you want to invest yourself. That can come with entitlement, but often it just means higher expectations, which, if they're not hit, "hurt" all the more, because you're so invested.
I've been really critical of the localization so far, but most of that stems from wanting it to be its best. I don't get like this with most games, especially when I don't play that many nowadays.
