Topic: Pokémon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl

@Snaplocket Well, I have played/replayed Pokémon games other than SwSh fairly recently, its a series I find myself consistently going back to play possibly more than any other, but sure if you've got anything else you'd like to project onto me, let's hear it.

I'd say Sword and Shield is at least on par graphically with other games in the series, excluding the wild areas. The animations are similar in terms of quality. So in turn, you're effectively saying that the other 3D pokemon games aren't polished as well. @Snaplocket

@Snaplocket I really don't have a clue what you're trying get at dude

I think the Chibi design and the 3D environments are okay for me.
As long it has decent 3D model, that's more than enough for me.
I think i will choose Brilliant Diamond first for Dialga and Day One purchase.

@Snaplocket Ah my bad, I thought you meant graphics wise.

Sword and Shield looks good enough most of the time (ehh could fix some framerate issues and potentialy get a more consistent resolution). It's the lack of a dub wich feels ancient.

I rather not have voice acting in pokemon, since it will only turn out like the anime which is horrid.

@Snaplocket I’ve not played Masters but very good is a bit too strong for the other, there’s not much voice acting in them and when there is it’s not the most complex or deep things in the world.

It doesn’t really matter as the company that did those horrible kid anime dubs like Pokemon, Yu Gi Oh etc wouldn’t be involved.

@jump True. The dubbing won't be done by companies like 4Kids. Honestly though, I'd say the original Yu-Gi-Oh english dub wasn't terrible, aside from them cutting scenes and changing them. Kaiba's voice fits him pretty well, and so does Yugi/Atem. The others are a bit hit or miss. Zexal however, has pretty bad english voice acting.. which is a shame, since the series is actually pretty interesting so far.

@VoidofLight I remember it differently but I will take your word for it as I’ve got no interest in watching it again.

@jump I've been binging all of the Yu-Gi-Oh anime, and I've been putting on the English dubs, since the duels are hit or miss most of the time, so I usually watch it in the background. The only ones that caught my attention were the original and Zexal.

@Snaplocket I thought everyone hated Zelda’s voice actress?

But yeah, the budget is there for decent voice acting to be done.

I wouldn't say Xenoblade 2's voice acting is remarkable in the slightest. There's a few people who can actually pull off the characters, but then you have Rex, who just.. sounds bad.

I don't want voice acting in the Pokémon games (even PIkachu/Eevee/Meowth's VAs are really jarring considering that none of the other Pokémon are human-voiced, not even other popular Pokémon such as Togepi), but the opening scene of Sword/Shield did feel a little silly with no audible dialogue considering the nature of the scene. I wouldn't have minded if voiceovers had been incorporated into key cut scenes, but I would much prefer them to be the extreme minority and used only where absolutely necessary.

However, some mumbles and murmurs like the NPCs in Breath of the Wild and support conversations in the 3DS Fire Emblem games could help make the characters feel a little less sterile.

There are many little ways in which the main series games could be improved immensely and make the absence of the National Dex and other features easier to stomach, but we were getting more content in the 3DS games for a lesser price than what we are getting on a so-called home console.

Let's Go, Pikachu/Eevee were laughable in how primitive they were even compared to the 3DS installments. While I did enjoy my time with the Let's Go games, I would have taken a port of Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon any day of the week.

@Snaplocket I liked Xenoblade 1's cast more than 2. Xenoblade 1's cast was also full of beginners like 2's, but Shulk can actually scream. The characters are also more grounded, and less over the top. If you finish the game, you'd probably like the cast more, since there's some actual good lines in the dialogue, and really well done delivery, which doesn't just feel like an over the top shonen anime.

@Snaplocket : If it were in Japanese, sure, otherwise, you can cough up the 20 bucks now.

I am not a fan of full voice acting in games as the performances are rarely on par with what you would expect of a film or television series, and the accents in English dubs are almost always upper crust Americans with the same old voices and the same old delivery. Yawn...

Just knowing pokemon is literally targeting kids now, instead of all ages like they used to, I fully expect a voice acted pokemon to be 4Kids level of bad, with Masters just being an exception in all honesty.

Did you not read the first sentence of that paragraph? I prefaced my comment on accents with:

Where I have already suggested that the most talented voice actors aren't being hired for these sorts of projects. For example, for all of the faults of the 4Kids dub of Pokémon from back in the day (at least where some of the culturally imperialistic dialogue is concerned), I can't fault the performances, which were otherwise excellent.

And further to your comment, my comment wasn't with respect to "foreign" accents. Even accents from other parts of the U.S. (or the English-speaking world generally, unless you also deem that to be "foreign") would go a long way of breaking the monotony.

And while only half of the U.S. cast of the Digimon Adventure series had reprised their roles for Tri., there is a night and day difference between the quality of the returning cast vs. the newbies, and nostalgia has nothing to do with it. The new actors sound just like most other actors who perform for dubbed anime today: virtually emotionless and non-theatrical, and at worst, indistinguishable from other characters due to their often monotonous delivery. Further to Tri. though, the quality of the dub only worsened as it seemed that they only sprung for the first or second take rather than trying to perfect the performances as the quality of the dub nosedived after the first film, and Tri. was one of very few situations where I actually wanted to watch the U.S. dub (albeit after watching the Japanese first).

And generally speaking, I overwhelmingly prefer the original audio of whatever I am watching/playing, no matter the language of the source material.

@VoidofLight Children have always been the primary target demographic for Pokemon.

@Snaplocket : I think you meant to say that it is a "disservice" to localisation companies and voice actors. "Disingenuous" means something else entirely.

Either way, it's good that the option is there for those who prefer it, but I am not in the least convinced that the best actors are hired for the job as far as dubs of Japanese material are concerned (as such actors by and large provide voiceovers only for dubbed material, which would have a substantially lower budget than local animated programmes produced from scratch), and while there are some great dub actors out there, the general quality of the performances, in my experience anyway, are far below the standard of other voice actors in the industry.