Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch

Before this game came out in Europe, forums were full of Americans who got it earlier and were arguing about which voice option is better - English or Japanese. Naturally I expected this to be important if it causes so much discussions. But when I started the game using English audio it turned out that most dialogues are not voiced. Like, at all. The cinematics have voice acting, but most of the in-engine cutscenes do not. Sidequests are 100% text-only, that's OK, JRPGs often do it, but even the main story is more often text only then not. I've completed the game up to obtaining the boat and Drippy was actually talking, like, 3 times or so. So much for the Welsh accent.

Why would they do it this day and age? Western RPGs like Dragon Age have every word voiced(they even voice some of the codex entries which is actually too much voice acting for me) since at least the beginning of this console generation. 'Tales of' series has a tradition of voicing all the main storyline dialogue but having the optional stuff text-only(although I think skits are also voiced in Japanese versions). Same goes for Yakuza series(subtitles-only translation, Japanese voices). Hell, I played Agarest 2 before NNK, it looks and feels at least 10 times cheaper - and it had every dialogue voiced(in Japanese only).

Why would they cut the cost so much on Ni No Kuni? It's a high profile game and it's 2013. I'm starting to think that I might have messed up something with my installation as I had PSN preorder and was affected by the bug.

Kaiser393 posted...

Yeah I totally agree...especially when a lot of talk about this game before it was release was about the voice acting. I was expecting a more Tales esque amount of voice acting myself.

Well, Tales has come a long way. I think only the last few Tales games have been nearly fully voiced while this is the first game of a series. ~_~

I think it probably came down to money and they couldn't pay for every single line of dialogue to be voiced originally. It gets more frequent at the latter end of the game though. The middle is pretty empty when it comes to voices though, but I'm okay with reading.

I do think this game would have probably lasted like 3-5 hours more if people had to wait through every single line of voiced dialogue though, lol.

There was the same amount of voiced dialogue in the JP version, so it's not like they cut out some dialogue for the English dub.
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Playing: Ni no Kuni - Captain Whamtastic http://i.imgur.com/IVH6BX0.jpg
Dragon Quest>Ys>SMT>Tales>Final Fantasy, but I enjoy all five. Da Bears!

Because they want to bring back the old school JRPG in all aspects. We should be thankful that there are voiced dialogues. Better than none.

skp_16 posted...

Better than none.

I disagree. IMO games should either have full voice acting or no voice acting. It takes you out of the experience when the game keeps switching between the two.