But I have a serious issue with the voicework and character designs in that game. It looks fantastic, I knew that already from the footage I'd seen over the recent months. But the voicework was horrid, especially the main protagonist Yuri Lowell. Now I shall admit to not knowing a lot about Japanese Anime, nor the customs and methods of designing a character. But I was almost certain that Yuri was a female protagonist who actually seem like a rather deep and interesting main figure in the game. I had not actually heard any English voicework prior to the demo, but I was shocked to hear that deep manly voice come from Yuri's mouth. I'm usually a pretty relaxed kind of gamer, but I had a weird reaction to hearing that voice. Yuri looks so much like a female character it's scary, and the developers thought it was a good idea to give him/her (I'm confussed) the most manly deep voice possible. 

It would have worked better if he was given a softer tone of voice, but I honestly couldn't see myself getting use to Yuri as the main character in a videogame that could last me a good many hours. Now I have no intention of this being my final judgement of the game, I had heard a lot of impressive praise for Tales of Vesperia when it came out in North American. But it's made me question my original purchase plans. It's not just Yuri either, there's one or two other pieces of voicework  that sent shivers down my spine. One voice in particular sounded as if it was voiced by the squeakiest voice actor/actress in squeakland, I'm usually perfectly fine with such voicework as I play The Sims afterall. But that voice will haunt me in nightmares from now on, truly a scary sound. 

Never in my videogame playing lifetime, as a games voicework questioned my decision to purchase the game. Now I've said this before, but you can't judge a game by it's demo and I know I shan't be doing that. But I like to be confortable with the characters I'm playing in a videogame, maybe even get to like them to a certain degree. Yuri Lowell makes me feel unconfortable, please don't think I'm a bad person for thinking this. I'm sure he is beloved by many Anime fans and I know bugger all about Anime to be totally honest. Maybe I will eventually grow to like him and his deep manly voice, but for now I think I'll stick with the Japanese voiceovers even though I often can't stand them in Japanese Roleplaying Games either. I'll see how I feel when the game get's released in Europe on June the 26th, maybe all my concerns will be carmed by Yuri Lowell as his disturbing deep English Voicework.

Thanks for Reading,
Joseph Bayliss (TrueEnglishGent)
(Twitter: JosephBayliss)