YouTuber Yong Yea Is the New English Voice of Kazuma Kiryu

That's quite cool. Great for him!

Hopefully, ProZD (another voice actor and YouTuber) can land more big roles as well. I was happy to learn he was Ratatoskr in God of War Ragnarok.

I'll need to hear the performance before I make any judgments, but I have a feeling he's going to be way too recognizable of a voice for it not to be distracting. Thankfully, it won't affect me either way since I play all the Like a Dragon games with the Japanese audio anyway.

Good speaker. Good voice. His 'reading the articles and headlines' type of YouTube coverage got tiresome. But he is not lacking in voice quality.

I wish you could choose each character’s language vo individually, Kazuma Kiryu Japanese every one else English.

Got a chance to meet this dude randomly, had watched and enjoyed some of his content during his mini war with Jason Schreier. Extremely cool and funny guy. He deserves this for pushing as long as he did.

Wow, Devs really do pay him to say whatever they want.

@Krysus Yeah it's really annoying how he basically tries to lengthen the video by reading quotes that are ALREADY HIGHLIGHTED by himself. I hope he does well because so many of these other VAs for yakuza/RGG games sound so out of place in english.

That's an amazing achievement! Too bad I'll never hear it 🤣

The game better ends with " But that's just one man's take. I'll see you guys next time. Kiryu out"

Don't mean to be too rude cause I don't wanna judge his skills till I actually hear it but why does it feel like just anyone can be a voice actor now? You go on Twitter and every other account has voice actor slapped on their bio

All the more reason I'm glad SE chose to use exceptional voice actors that delivered fantastic performances for FFXVI. I wouldn't have played with the dub otherwise lol

There's miscasting, and then there's miscasting THIS badly.

Def never touching the dub now.

He's really good his vocal range is great he has many roles and honestly it's hard to tell its him in a lot of them

@Nepp67 Well it's good if you're listening to the video as opposed to watching it, otherwise you wouldn't get the gist of a particular segment. I happen to listen to videos at work with headphones and it comes in handy when he does this. Can't speak for everyone though

I have no idea who this is. As a voice actor, that’s probably a bonus though. I’ll be playing with the Japanese VA regardless!

@RBMango He's actually been very good of not using his real voice when voice acting.

@Judal27 He's pro voice actor, he's been doing it for years and has been in lots of stuff including voicing a key character in the JoJo anime.

His pitch is way too high. If he has range it will be ok, if it's his normal voice, not at all.

Happy for the guy but most fans who have played the games in Japanese will stick with that language I assume. Newer fans however may gravitate to the English side of it. I’ll be sticking to the Japanese voices but good luck to him regardless!!

Never heard of him until now but good for him I guess.
Looking at his IMDB credits his roles within animation & games includes (but not limited to):
*Regulus in Thermae Romae Novae
*Sekido in Demon Slayer
*Monk, Amino, and additional voices in Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre
*Father Pucchi and Pale Snake in Jojo's Bizzare Adventure
*Wolfgang in Sword Art Online the Movie: Progressive - Scherzo of Deep Night
*Yasutaka Shirakaba in Lost Judgement - The Kaito Files
*Yami in Blind Fate - Edo No Yami
*Ratatoskr in God of War: Ragnarök

Oh god this is so random , also thankfully i only use jap voice acting

btw Yong didn't voice Ratatoskr in God of War: Ragnarök
https://www.pushsquare.com/guides/god-of-war-ragnarok-full-cast-list-and-all-voice-actors#who-plays-ratatoskr-in-god-of-war-ragnarok - it was SungWon Cho

Has good voice and used to watch him awhile back but he drags videos out so much.

Anyway, I am interested in seeing how he'll sound in this one.

Been following Yong ever since he's been doing Metal Gear analysis videos, and he's definitely not some unqualified annoying Youtuber.

https://youtu.be/rxXn7WSKiN0

Yongs got range as you can see here and I'm very happy for him.

Nani!? LoL really 🤣 fair play to him but kiryu has original voice and sub for me!

Good for him, can't put my finger on it, but I never really liked him. That said, I play Yakuza with Japanese VA anyway. Feels weird to play that game in English.

I'm going to be "that person" but I find it kind of weird to give such a Japan-centric game like Like a Dragon...a voice actor from Korean descent. I get that voice actors are rarely booked with ethnicity in mind but it just adds that one little extra layer of authenticity that I really appreciate. Like Ace Attorney Chronicles for example.

Nice for Yong to keep picking up major roles. As always, though, I'll play LaD in Japanese.

Awesome. I really like Yong. His Metal Gear knowledge is second to none.

Always play Yakuza in Japanese, people. 🧐
Yong as a YTer = meh, as are most of these long-winded vloggers.

Surprising but I really don't care. If you play Yakuza games with anything but the Japanese voice work you are commiting a crime worthy of jail.

Imagine playing any Yakuza game with English voice acting 😂

An American Korean guy who also speaks Spanish doing an English voice for a Japanese character is hilarious to me.

@Dusk_Actual haven't done that since Mark Hamill and Michael Madsen were doing voices for it.

He has previous as he has a role in The Kaito Files as Shirakaba

A bit unfair to label him a youtuber in the headline,gives people the impression he's some dude they picked because he's popular ,hes done tons of voice work ,games,movies and TV shows.

English? Yuck.

Might not buy this game now with him being the English voice. He may be a nice guy in real life but I personally find he comes across as the type of guy that has the personality of a wooden plank, watching paint dry would be better than hanging around with this guy.

I had no idea Yong Yea was a voice actor. I first found him during the build up to, and disaster that was, the Metal Gear Solid 5 launch with his interviews with the cast, past and present.

@tallythwack he's most famous as a YouTuber, at least given that I'm finding out he's a voice actor today.

Lucky that I like to play with Japan voices then.

Yong Yea's voice is too weak for that character

@MattBoothDev the majority of voice actors most people have never heard of ,but if you search their name you find theyve done a lot of work,they don't get the recognition they deserve to be fair.

N.i.c.e yong yea is cool.word up son

I didn't even know Yakuza had an english dub.
Must suck for the 5 guys that play in english.

For yakuza games I prefer the japanese voice.

What kind of mentalist plays the Yakuza games without Japanese voices?

@tallythwack ah, but I have heard of Yong Yea... From YouTube on his gaming commentary.

I didn't know Kiryu even had an english voice previously. When? All the series games starring him don't have an English dub that I know of.

I also didn't know Gaiden was going to have an English dub, that's great news for anyone that doesn't really want to do subs. For me, personally, I'm in too deep, it's Kuroda or bust for me.

Who plays a Yakuza game in english?

@NEStalgia Yakuza on PS2 had an English dub. It's . . . not great, most likely due to poor or non-existent voice direction.

@MattBoothDev not as a voice actor though ,which was my point

Japanese Kiryu is the only Kiryu for me.

Can't play these games in English. Feels weird.

@dancingstar93 Oh, yeah, that one I knew, Mark Hamil as Majima is the most disturbing thing I've ever wanted to unhear. But that was one game a long long time ago!

I forgot there was the cameo in LaD, so that's probably what this is talking about.

wow, i'm impressed, i followed yong for some time and i knew he did voice work for various games so this will be intriguing how well he does in the next yakuza games

don't hate on the english dub, recent games were fine at least i don't have to look at walls of text subtitles to understand what they are saying 🙄🙄

Not sure his voice will fit tbh but I’ll play in Japanese anyway so doesn’t matter much to me.

As someone who always prefers the English VA in Sega games, it's good to know that Like a Gaiden will get English VA.

@WallyWest eh I've known of him way before his VA stuff became more prevalent on his channel despite saying he's done it before youtubing. Either way I'm not really trying to discredit him. Just find it weird all these YouTubers or streamers suddenly show up as voice actors now

@Judal27 Sure and i've been watching his stuff for years as well however he is a proper pro voice actor now and he's pretty damn good at it.

That's cool, but I will keep the japanese voice. It's more fitting.

Can't stand Yong and it's sad that they brought back Kiryu's VA from the original for 7 just to immediately replace him with an eceleb. Didn't like Nyanners in Ishin either. Glad I don't use RGG dubs.

They really chose a clickbaiter with no integrity over a guy who sounds like batman... They might as well have dsp and ltg as voice actors too or mrbossftw.

Game development reaches a new low i see.