Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name has been warmly received on PS5 and PS4, but there’s been controversy surrounding its English dub. While most fans generally prefer to play the franchise with subtitles anyway, SEGA has found success adding English voiceovers to the series in recent years, making the franchise more accessible than it’s historically been.
But the decision to cast YouTuber Yong Yea as protagonist Kazuma Kiryu has been largely lambasted, and the first clips of his performance have been roundly ridiculed. Now you’ll be able to experience his turn as the iconic protagonist in its entirety, because the game has been updated with its previously delayed English language dub.
We’re fairly sure all involved parties worked incredibly hard on these voiceovers, but the replies to developer RGG Studio’s announcement aren’t exactly enthusiastic to say the least. “I would rather my ears not bleed,” one fan noted. Yea has a lot of work to do to convince fans of his performance, then – good job Infinite Wealth is right around the corner as well, eh?
[source twitter.com]
Comments 36
You know I would have had respect for Yong if he acknowledged criticism and tried to improve from it. Instead he tweets out and considers the criticism as unimportant and thanks the compliments.
Didn't hear his works myself yet, but if it's that bad then it's more the fault of the director of the project. The director approved of the work and claimed as good for the project. Same with movies, if the acting is bad there's one person that said it was great.
That said I believe studios should really invest in great voice talent and don't underestimate it's effect. The quality is fantastic on the big titles these days.
I think I would rather huff my own farts out a homemade bum-bong delivery system.
@Nepp67 He's a hypocrite pure and simple. Because what is his OTHER day job? What is the thing that got him internet famous to begin with? Picking apart the work of other people and telling them that they need to do better.
''Do as I say, not as I do'' is perhaps the quickest way to get someone to dislike you short of punching them in the face.
Oh please, the dub is not fitting unfortunately (also localisation directors responsibility), but people here have some weird maralistic personal grudge which is rather pathetic.
Lol no. Its always the Japanese dub on these games. I love how over the top they are. Wouldn't be the same
It sounds fine though is a departure from the over the top gruffness of prior casting.
I also think that unfortunately if you know Yong then you can hear him in that performance and I would assume that is what has unreasonably annoyed people.
I'll play the version with Yong out.
I am a huge jrpg fan but, even if the dub is not that good, I prefer to understand what the characters talk without having to read tons of text. I still don't get why the Atelier developers stopped providing dubs. They said it cost too much or something
Don't really get the hate to be honest. If you don want it, don't use it. It's good that the option is there, but regardless of dub quality, I'd always recommend people to play these games in Japanese.
It's made by Japanese people, set in Japan, features almost exclusively Japanese characters and the subject matter is as Japanese as it gets, the spoken Japanese feels like an important part of that as well.
Plus I'm hoping that after playing hundreds of hours of RGG games and undoubtedly hundreds more in the future, I might actually pick up some Japanese. Wishful thinking, I'm sure.
I assumed this drama was totally overblown and just a buncha internet people being internet people, but then I saw a video of the English dub of Kiryu singing a karaoke song at was actually astonishingly bad. Like, I couldn't believe nobody stepped in and said we can't do this. It's really quite something.
I always play in Japanese anyway so it doesn't bother me but c'mon.
Here we go controversial lol it's either you like or don't , Nani!? Lol no only original for me.
Man I forgot that was coming and already got through that-.-'
An update? Like a patch? So I HAVE to download it when I get the game? That limited SSD space would be better served on anything else.
@Nepp67 He's a professional actor (as well as a YouTuber). I don't think you CAN, or should, take onboard hundreds of different people's personal and unprofessional feedback especially from online/Twitter. You have to trust in your own ability and the people around you including the director etc.
Honestly would any other voice actor get this sort of 'feedback' and be expected to compile it all and change? It's a double standard.
I started playing gaiden today in……English!!
After playing for 3 hours the English dub is rough compared to judgment and like a dragon but I think that might have more to do with the localization team behind gaiden possibly being one dude using Google translate.
Kiryu is a legend, he should not be voiced by a youtuber with VA aspirations. This is coming from someone who only plays Yakuza in Japanese as intended.
Japanese Kiryu >>>>>>>English Kiryu
@Martijn87 You are spot on. As an actor you can have certain ideas about a role but if a director wants to go a complete other direction you deliver.
English dub of Yakuza games? Not for me, Clive.
Yea, the man who can turn 3 minutes of content into 22 minutes videos.
> playing the Dub
> in Yakuza/LAD/Judgment
No. And I refuse to elaborate.
He can't act ahaha
Fine with me.
Reading subtitles after a long day at work is not how i sometimes want to play a game. And Steamdeck has the same issue as Switch where some developers do not scale text for the smaller screen. Good to have the option.
Publishers should simply disregard when people complain about a feature that is "optional"
Do not use it, problem solved.
My boi yong is the complain counter of game industry........
Anyone would think (based on some of the comments)the English dub is compulsory if you want to play the game 😂 I for one will be playing in the English dub but I'm glad players have the option of both.
I would understand the backlash better if the English dub was the only option. The people hating on the English dub won't even play that version anyways.
Oh wow... great. Can i have the choice not to download the patch? Kind of a waste of disk space.
I saw some clips, they were not very good.
I have never or will never play a Yakuza/Like A Dragon game with a dub. So irrelevant to me.
To be honest, I never understood why you’d want to play the Yakuza/LaD series in a different language other than Japanese.
@LifeGirl I wouldn't even call him internet famous come on now he is no different from the rest of the drama/rumor YouTubers putting out clickbait bottom of the barrel slop.
@themightyant Ah yes 2023 where everyone and their grandma is a model, actor, athlete. Lol come on dude i have seen better acting from Lana Rhoades
His performance odds simply superb.
Glad I'm not the only person who thinks this was a stupid idea. Yong Nope.
As long as there's option to choose whether to have english or japanese voice, it's not a big deal I think. I like when japanese games have good voice acting though, like most squareenix games (final fantsy series and octopath traveller for example).
Options are good but the English voice acting in this is terrible.
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