Topic: Dragon Quest XI + I, II, III & Beyond

I disagree, on the basis that games that are horribly inconsistent with voice acting are MUCH MUCH more annoying.

Both Dragon Quest Builders and Heroes are legitimately good games. The only garbage we’re seeing is your opinions of them!

I also get the distinctive impression that you have never played those games. If not, why don’t you go ahead and try them out?

This is exactly the problem that VII/7 has. The game's prologue, which features no battles whatsoever, takes about 3 or so hours before you finally reach the next island. It takes an average of 20 hours before you unlock vocations.

It's really ridiculous. Despite my icon being from DQ7, it's not a very enjoyable game because of how sluggish it is. Definitely doesn't have very good replay value.

@kkslider5552000 Ok Dude, Go ahead and play your second rate DQ games and be blind, while us real DQ fans are upset we don't get the same treatment and releases as Japan and the REAL DQ games. Have fun with your fake kiddy version.

Why is no one else here upset that Square never brought over DQX online and now DQ11 is pushed back till next year, and all the old releases are only on DS? And all they give us is throwing a bone to the casual crowd (dragon quest heros and builders). Guess i am the only real fan that cares, enjoy your little game.

@Reginald 7 is one of the best games OF ALL TIME.

Precisely my problem.

While really good story/plot elements are welcome in my book, dragging everything out for the sake of length itself is just frustrating. Many of the RPGs I've played could have been shortened in some way.

This is where I disagree to an extent. I'm not against voice acting since I feel that it enhances the immersion in some cases, but sometimes I feel that it's better to read the game's text in the mental voice of how you think that character should sound. I don't mind if that's guided now and again, like with how later games in the Zelda series handle nonverbal voice noises.

Take my recent playthrough of Unwound Future. While not fully voice acted, the moments where it was done were, for the most part, great. Most characters sounded like I expected them too. The only exception was Flora's VA this time around. She sounded WAY different than what I expected, and I found the lack of a British accent bothersome.

@Tyranexx I get what you're saying (and maybe I'm spoiled by VA in modern games), but seeing the people talk without producing any sound just feels... off. As if it's missing something.

Leaving it up to your imagination works better for books I think. It's not as if you can imagine what the characters look like in a video game. That's already decided for you. Therefore I don't mind it if they give their characters a voice too.

They could always add in an option to turn off VA, everybody wins.

I believe the Japanese release of VIII didn't have any VA, so there's a chance the localised version of XI will have VA.

So when the game ends up arbitrary of when it actually uses voice acting and when it doesn't, can we admit they're just too cheap to pay the voice actors to do the whole thing?

I'm not sure if VIII went against that trend, but it is so annoying. I can get it with minor characters, but there is no way you can justify your main characters just not voice acting for lines. At least when they do none of it, it is consistently none of it. Even in terms of playing a video game, inconsistent voice acting is so faaaaaake. It takes me entirely out of the experience and story, ESPECIALLY when it happens in cutscenes. Half the time, I'd take bad voice acting if it meant it's ALL voiced. It's only somewhat less jarring than if in the middle of a movie, it randomly became silent with subtitles for a few minutes.

@kkslider5552000 DQ VIII was in 2005, almost 12 years ago this November, so its okay. But now-a-days no excuse.

@Octane: Likewise I get what you're saying, and having the option to turn off voice acting would make both ends of the spectrum happy. Again, I'm not against VA in games, but it can be a bit jarring if the character doesn't sound like you'd expect. If it's only a VA or two that I dislike, I can usually deal with it.

As for imagining what characters look like, that is less of a problem nowadays. Until the more recent Pokemon games came on the scene, I had to rely on character art and the images I generated in my mind to imagine how a character or environment would look. I would fill in the blanks if possible between the reality of the screen and the fantasy playing out in front of me within my head. I even did this with X/Y to an extent due to how the character sprites are rendered; I mentally made their proportions more realistic, which thankfully isn't a problem with Sun at the moment.

@MegaTen Who wants to pay money to use their own imagination? Voice acting in BOTW was top notch.

@Tyranexx Isn't it strange though? You don't the characters to look more defined, thus requiring less imagination to, well, imagine what they look like. However, you want the opposite for their... voices?

@ReeLongbow Voice acting in BOTW was... not good. Some were pretty bad. I've seen heard many games with better voice acting.

@Octane: I guess the best way of outlining how I feel is how the VA was handled in Fire Emblem: Awakening. There you could pick how you thought that Robin should sound; while somewhat limited, I still appreciated the gesture. I didn't have to worry about my young adult-looking character sound like a twelve-year-old. I understand that not every game has a budget to have an option like that, however. In cases where I'm not fond of the VA work, I would like the option of turning it off like you mentioned previously. Unless it's been a really long day at work, I don't mind reading text. I spent hours reading through database entries in ACIV, not the least so that I could look up the actual historical events later on.

I suppose the most drastic measure would be to completely mute the device the game is on, but I do like my environmental noises and musical scores.

@Octane Your opinion not mine. I love the british voice acting, they make everything sound more epic.

@ReeLongbow Wait.. what? The entire cast was American... There were no British voice actors.

@Octane Zelda sounded british to me, ive been American my whole life, that was defintly british or at least mid atlantic accent like frasier

@ReeLongbow That wasn't British though, that was someone pretending to be British.

@Octane o..k.. and your point. It was a british accent.