I think the english voice actors Capcom hires are shit, as usual.
While I don’t understand a great amount of Japanese (and my ignorance of the language perhaps blurs out any disdain I have for their voice actors) I still feel the Japanese voice actors deliver their quips with more conviction with what we’ve heard so far. I find this especially true in SFIV.
Necalli doesn’t quite sound right however and the females are as sonically irritating as ever also (with perhaps the exception of Chun). There’s something very lacklustre with the announcer voice too - I really hope what we have heard so far is a place-holder for him. It would also be interesting if they offered a couple of announcer options to help freshen things up perhaps.
Time will tell. The game is far from finished so who knows what gets changed or perhaps clipped. I remember early demos of Super SFIV were rife with repeated phrases from the announcer for example which was fixed with the final release.
I think Mika’s VA fits the character perfectly so no problems here. Birdie’s english VA eats the Japanese one alive. Its so much better. Cammy’s english VA was always better than dealing with obnoxious Engrish. Ryu was never good. I haven’t heard enough of Ken to make a call. I’ve never liked Laura Bailey as Chun and this is coming from someone who loves Laura Bailey. Vega is always good in either language. I also like Bison in both but Japanese is definitely better. And I fully agree about Nash needing more base in his voice. Liam O’Brien definitely should have been the one to voice him.
I like Karin, Ryu sounds fine but I prefer the Japanese VA’s delivery for his stuff(Just has more of an impact) I love Ken’s VA in general so I’m digging him too. Mika’s sounds fucking weird though, haven’t heard the others yet.
Personally my issue with the English VA’s mostly comes from their battle voices. I mean, if we just watch the prologues/endings from SF4 and watch the cutscenes in the Arcade mode - I think that when characters just talk, they sound perfectly fine and they certainly fit their roles (save for maybe Abel, Juri, Dee Jay, Fuerte and a couple of others).
For example, I like Fei Long in both ENG and JPN equally, they deliver excellent perfomances in both gameplay and anime department. Same with Bison - though ENG Bison has more bass in his voice which makes him sound more like an actual villain, and so on
It’s just when it comes to battle voices (say, pronouncing the move names) - that’s where it becomes very hit or miss with the VAs. And here we have some examples like Cammy, and ESPECIALLY Yang - I think Yang’s ENG VA is fucking awesome, and then Bison just sounds awful screaming “Psycho crusher”
But you can’t have separate VAs for gameplay and cutscenes, so I guess we’ll have to deal with some in most cases
This! Give me the System Voice options like Guilty Gear and BlazBlue do!
Let me hear the announcers from Alpha 3 and CvS2, or, heck, give the characters’ VAs do that job as well!
In GGXrd I think ENG Elphelt’s VA is quite funny as the System Voice, especially when you pick her on the character select screen and she goes like “Elphe…wait, you picked me!? OH MY GOSH!”
Ryu sounds fine. Although he sounds kinda…calmer when doing stuff. Even when KO’ed he sounds…blandish. I like Ken, R.Mika is good. Birdie’s is WAY better in english. Bison was always good. Necalli…both his voices (and the character) I dislike so that’s a whatever. Karin is Karin don’t care about her, Cammy and Chun are nice. Nash is quiet but fits him.
Hopefully Jessica Straus comes back as Juri. Juri in JPN sounds…not evil not pyschotic. Too much “yahoo” and a little too high pitched.
You kidding? ENG Juri is one of the worst VAs SF4 had. She sounds so bored, so quiet, doing such a fucking lame attempt at being seductive while actually sounding like she’s gonna feel asleep
No, just no. I wonder why they even spend money on that useless feature. They could have brought back special intros/outros instead and that would have been tons better.