I purchased my 360 around September last year, the combination of attractive pricing and the promise of some very nice JRPG confirmed a decision I've tentatively made near the beginning of the year.

Along with my purchase I bought a copy of Lost Odyssey, it was a classic style JRPG that hit all the right button, the story sounds good, the graphic was decent and the combat system was fairly old schooled (my favourite!). One of the biggest bonuses was the fact that it had Japanese VA, it was a totally unexpected revelation and I was overjoyed.

Fast-forward to a couple of weeks ago and I finally manage to make some headways with the game, first Cod:WaW then L4D killed my meager free time last year and Street Fighter IV and Killzone 2 sucked out my life and soul this year, but alas my JRPG urge has finally hit a breaking point and I popped the first disk in and began to play my 1-hrs in saved game.

I got most of the way through the first disk before I gave up in tears and admitted defeat.

Yes, I just couldn't do it.

It was unimaginable, and something I never thought I'd contemplated but during one of the numerous cutscene I finally couldn’t take it any longer and snapped.

I’ve had enough! I just couldn’t pretend it doesn’t exist any longer!

The Japanese voice acting had to go!

I never EVER in all my life thought I'd see the day where I prefer the English VA over the Japanese VA of a JRPG EVER, but here I am broken and humbled before the power of mighty Microsoft.

With their cash they’ve made the impossible possible!

The game was obviously design for western audience in mind because the lip synch of the Japanese VA was incredibly off; I could see the mouth moving but no voice! I could hear the voice but see no mouth movement! I could see the character's mouth open and close in perfect asynchronisation, it’s like they're timing the fucken sound to appear only when the character's mouth is close! It started out as a small pet peeve but quickly grew to become an incurable festering all consuming disease that completely consumed my gaming ‘zen’ and made me into a mindless ravenous beast.

Lost Odyssey became unplayable with the Japanese voice acting on.

It had to go; Lost Odyssey just does not feel like a Japanese game with English voice dubbing. It felt rather like a western game with Japanese voice dubbing (and terrible ones at that!).

Why MS? Oh the humanity why? You gave me everything I want in a beautifully presented package only to destroy me like a heart attack grill quadruple bypass burger, hiding its hideous quantity of deadly calories behind the delicious aroma of succulent beef!

Not only was the English voice acting a superb effort, but it had excellent lip synch! They freakin match! And worst of all I liked it! I feel dirty even typing those words!

Before I realize it, I was thinking: hey! maybe FFXIII will have better English VA too!

Then I realize what I have just briefly imagined and gasped in absolute horror before curling up in a fetal position and crying myself to sleep.

...

True story dat!

If you don't understand Japanese, why would you play with subs?

Not all English voice actors are horrible. Jessica Boone, David Hayter, many of them that I can't think their names right now but that do voice work for English translations of anime can be quite good if you're just not being a "I have to watch my animes in Japanese" purist.

Because I'm a complete otaku, I grew up with fansub anime on burnt disk and gathering on saturday night at the local uni anime club watching Slayers and Ranma 1/2 on a projector, watching them was my early passion and I watch anime regularly to this day. Over the year, I've learnt that the English VA goes from terrible to tolerable, be in in anime or game (FFX I nearly didn't finish that game because of Yuna! Grrr). It a personal pet peeve of mine and it HAS influence the purchase of games in the past before.

And yes I'm an elitist purist bastard who until now has only ever rated English VA tolerable to all things Japanese.

My spirit has left my body and it is now merely a husk of its former self, void of life and passion.

Well admitably there are a lot of HORRIBLE Eng VA's.

I agree the Japanese voice acting in Lost Odyssey is not that good. I also tried the German voice acting since that's my native language and found it pretty good which is surprising since I hated most German dubs for American films growing up.

This has been my question all along. To me, its the same as having our characters speak in Animal Crossing-ese...and I'm a huge JRPG fan too...

This was actually kind of funny.

If anyone has clips of the Japanese VA, could you upload them for me? I am curious what the characters in LO sound like with Japanese VA. I do not care how good or bad the voices are.

I think it has something to do with your idea of quality, or what you match together with other things.

I used to always watch anime with japanese VAs, because 99% of all english dubs were shit. Of course, it was much harder to judge quality on the japanese ones, so people might imagine them being quite good, if they are in fact mediocre. If there are good english VAs in a dub, I much prefer them to the japanese dub, which is just one reason I loved Valkyria Chronicles. It had good english VAs!

People who are fans of JRPGs might also not like that the feel of a RPG is being ruined by english VAs, when they are used to getting the entire japanese package. I guess, if everything in the game 'feels' japanese, then english VAs might ruin the immersion for some. Although this last part is pure guessing