RPGCast – Episode 517: “Sonic and the Holograms”
Not much news, but there are many games out this week. We won’t play any of them though. Alice is on about Space Station 13, Kelley re-upped World of Warcraft, Anna Marie is playing Dragon Quest III, and Chris is still playing Final Fantasy IV.
Question of the Week
What’s your favorite bad performance from a good voice actor?
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QOTW: I’d have to say Grant George in Tales of Vesperia Definitive Edition as Yuri Lowell. Now it’s not that it’s a bad performance, so much as it’s a bad approximation, because Grant George got set up for failure from the get go being asked not to voice a character, but to approximate Troy Baker voicing a character. Often giving the character of Yuri a different personality than Troy gave him, and making Yuri look like he was suffering some multiple personality disorder.
People like to say that they can’t hear the difference between the two and can’t tell when the voice switches between actors, but I can hear it clear as day.
It wasn’t a deal breaker and I still enjoyed the game immensely, but I’m not gonna pretend it wasn’t very noticable.
My example for Question of the Week is the first time Hilda, the Witch of Destruction, is properly introduced in Stella Glow. She’s voiced by the venerable Wendee Lee, a VA I admire and respect very much. I think she’s both a skilled actor and voice director. Throughout the rest of Stella Glow, and even a brief flashback in the very beginning, Wendee does an excellent job voicing Hilda. The exception is the prologue chapter. Hilda is likely supposed to sound cold and aloof, but she just sounds bored instead. XD “Bad” is harsh, but it certainly could have been better.
In my opinion, Dragon Quest III and Dragon Quest IX suffered from the same problems – the create-a-party system meant that no party member other than the hero could be connected to the game’s story, and grinding job levels in both games became so tedious that the postgame content was more trouble than it was worth.
I think both games are worth playing at least once. More than once, I’m not so sure, unless the player specifically wants to attempt a certain party combination, challenge game, or speedrun.
QotW: Since we’re excluding FFX for obvious reasons, my favorite bad video game voice acting is in Arc Rise Fantasia. Niko’s and Cecile’s English voices were notoriously painful to hear; at the same time, their VA fit their respective characters perfectly. The entire game has been justifiably criticized for bad VA, but it’s one of my favorite JRPGs of all time.