Kingdom Hearts 3's Voice Acting is F*cking Abysmal

As is the editor for cinematics. The cuts between shots are so poorly paced.

I'm not shocked Square would release something this shoddy, in terms of narrative production values, but I'm baffled Disney allowed KH3 to release like this.

Mickey, in particular, is so unbelievably bad. There are probably 150 people who could do a Mickey voice better than the VO actor in KH3.

Really immersion breaking, imo.

Game was shit to begin with, the whole idea of kingdom hearts is beyond ridiculous.

What? The voice acting is more than fine, the dialogue is garbage, the story is garbage but not the voice acting.

There are too many other issues for me to get hung up on VA. But good god, Disney needs to get out of this contract as soon as humanly possible.

Are you playing the US version?

You know, I enjoyed Kingdom Hearts when I was a child, but that was mostly because of me nerding out over all the Disney implications and easter eggs. I didn't care much at all about the Final Fantasy side of things. Looking back I can't help but think how absorbed the series is with its cringeworthy melodrama. I really don't understand why its fans take the fandom to such an obsessive level. Is it maybe because of Disney? I do know Disney fans can be...eccentric.

A lot about this game is abysmal. It's hard for me to think of something that isn't abysmal.

LOL. I wasn't expecting people to complain about VA in a game with Disney characters. I'm gonna guess that's one of the game's smaller problems. The biggest problem is that there's Disney characters. I'm still wondering who this game caters to. Who can play this series without cringing?

"Breaks immersion" lol. Like having freaking Disney characters in your game didn't already break the immersion enough.

You expect good voice acting in a jrpg? Every single jrpg has laughable voice acting. Every single one.

Square Enix works 10 years on a game and the end result looks absolute shit time after time.

How these guys are still in business is beyond me.

5 million in sales first week and everybody keeps bitching and whining like they can stop greatness lol

It's kingdom hearts. People are not playing it for it's narrative.

@R4gn4r0k: because people play kingdom hearts for it's gameplay.

The character animation in the cut scenes are an absolute joke. They feel like PS2 era animations.

Kingdom Hearts voice acting, writing, and directing has been terrible since the first one. That's a given for the series at this point. I'm still gonna buy it though, because it's about time someone released a video game with an accurate Pixar aesthetic. It doesn't work for some classic characters though. Like Hercules. He gives me uncanny vibes.

@IMAHAPYHIPPO: Yes.

@valgaav_219: Don't want to stop it, just wish they'd hired actors that sound a little closer to the source material.... or deliver a line with any kind of rhythm.

I recently started playing the 1.5 final mix version on PS4 after getting it in a sale having never played Kingdom Hearts and the game blows.

Even though it is a PS2 game it hasn't aged well at all, looking at videos for this it seems like the same thing with better graphics.

So you're saying all those celebrity voice actors suck?

Anyway, the voice acting sounds about right. The game's main target audience are kids and teens, and the voice acting sounds more-or-less like what you'd expect from something targeted towards kids and teens.

Kingdom hearts was never a good series lol.

The fanbase is just rabid and loves hyping 7/10 into 9/10 games.

here's the little fun part for the VA for Kingdom Hearts
The JP voices for the original KH characters (Sora, Riku, Kairi, etc) and FF characters are great, but sadly the Disney Characters sound weird in JP
where as in the US voices for KH OG and FF characters they sound cheesy, but the Disney characters sound great.

To be fair, how can anyone provide a good voice performance in a game with such an awkward concept and abysmal writing?

That's the dubbing effect.

Whenever you dub from one language to another, there's almost always a big dip in voice-acting quality. That's why dubs tend to have a negative reputation. It's not necessarily the fault of the voice actors, but it's just difficult to dub over pre-recorded lines, while trying to match the timing, in a different language.

I agree with you 100%, playing/listening on the original VA they were originally made in are always better.
And I also agree that the blame cannot be put on the VA's since the characters animation/lip movement timing are already put on place, so they have difficulty trying to match the timing. Especially if some dialogue, when translated, may become longer or shorter than the original.

I liked the game but, if I were to compare KH2 & KH3...Kingdom Hearts 2 is by far a better game. No contest whatsoever in my opinion. There's a lot I could say about it but:

There were too many cutscenes in KH3. Also it felt kind of rushed...especially the end segments/fights with the organisation members. Not enough worlds either. Everything that was supposed to be a surprise was shown off on Youtube prior to the games release. The worlds felt way too restricted as well. Like there were areas I wanted to explore but couldn't. It was a very easy game as well compared to the others. I didn't die once.

It just felt very watered down compared to the other games. Like, it didn't feel as if it was a "worthy" enough sequel. No hate, remember this is just mine opinion. Would love for somebody to give their perspective on the game. I did create a topic about this on the "Games Discussion" thread too.

I used to love the games growing up. But really all they have to offer me these days is the addition of "new" Disney/Pixar worlds. The franchise is incredibly overrated and sometimes very hard to follow. I only play them because I feel the need to seeing as I've played everything else in the series. When in actual reality I just want them to put an end to it already. It's had it's time.

@IMAHAPYHIPPO:

I agree with Pedro. The voice acting itself is fine. They just had a shitty script.

Such a dumb franchise to begin with. Take beloved Disney characters who’s lore has nothing to do with high adventure and stick them into some convoluted jrpg.

Shame on you Disney. You’re better than japanese trash.

Yeah, like that time when Disney shamelessly plagiarised Kimba the White Lion and remade it into The Lion King...

Anyway... Love it or hate it, Kingdom Hearts is Disney's biggest video game franchise (besides Star Wars). Disney will support it for as long as it prints them money.

Typically, a subtitled product is almost always superior to a dubbed product, with very few exceptions. This is especially true when you're dealing with Asian languages, since they're very different to English. Japanese lines often have very different timings and associated expressions than the equivalent lines in English.

However, Kingdom Hearts is a bilingual production. Like you said, the Squenix characters sound weird in English, and the Disney characters sound weird in Japanese. You could have a middle-ground, with the Squenix characters speaking Japanese and the Disney characters speaking English, but it would still sound weird with them talking to each other in different languages. It's going to sound weird no matter what language.

yeah, for Kingdom Hearts, its going to have to be with either choosing to play in either full ENG or full JP. The topic of the thread states abysmal for KH3, now in reality, like we both have pointed out, there is nothing wrong with the VA, its just that the dialogue sound cheesy/weird. If they want to know what abysmal VA is like, they can try Arc Rise Fantasia, Sands of Destruction, or Chaos Wars. XD

Ding Ding Ding, we have a winner in this bitter falling apart forum.... notice how there is NEVER any mention of gameplay in anything on this forum ever.

KH1 aged badly yes.

Play KH2 ... far more palatable.

Back to KH3 , the Disney aspects were handled far better than before, buncha kids in this forum hating on Disney characters, notice alot of Persona Avatars ... yea AMAZINGLY DEEP "Emegherd 10 event start relationships that normal people deal with every day, so mature!".

Maybe if the modern games spent less time and money on animation and snow foot prints, the gameplay would be better, lets bash a game that's doesn't waste its entire budget on making me believe the avatar is like a movie.

It does but it kind of suits the game in a so bad it's good kind of way.

It's also worth noting the primary target audience of the game: children and teenagers. The cheesy dialogues and voice-acting are appropriate for the age demographics it's mainly targeted towards.

Ironically, Arc Rise Fantasia had good voice acting in the original Japanese version. But the English dub was atrocious.

yeah, the ENG dub for Arc Rise Fantasia was just so bad to the point that I coudn't push myself to play it. Sold it off and decided to import the JP version which was night and day difference.

and I agree, the target audience for KH was originally kids and teens so its understandable for the dialogues, still cheesy though lol