This conversation has gotten super off track. No one should be looking down on the other over personal preferences, and arguing over them is futile. No one is going to convince anyone to change their opinion on something so subjective.
Thought exercise: I wonder if other Japanese-audio fans would accept the opposite situation. I prefer to play Shenmue in Japanese, but if it meant getting more content and a better experience, I’d sacrifice the Japanese audio and play in English only. I know it’s easy for us to say Japanese is the real way to play, but honestly the game takes place in China, it probably has a much smaller audience in Japan than the US/Europe, and Suzuki-san does have some strange affinity for the English VO.
What if some publisher said, “Yeah, we’ll fund Shenmue 4, but since the potential reach in Japan is minimal compared to the West, and the majority of gamers prefer to play in their own language, we want to spend 100% of our resources on making a high quality English VO, with other languages having subtitles.”
Honestly, I could see this happening. If Shenmue’s poorly received English presentation was retooled into one more in-line with other games, that would go a long way in attracting more consumers. A quality English dub and better graphics would appease most people’s surface level complaints about the series, and would likely result in them becoming more open to its unique gameplay offerings.
As I wrote this I questioned whether not I really would give up the Japanese VO and felt conflicted. Although Ryo is just a character from someone’s imagination, he becomes real to us through his visual design and his voice actor. That’s why we were so picky over the character models. That’s why when a character’s voice actor changes it affects the way we feel towards them emotionally. Asking a fan to give up their preferred audio, no matter how corny and janky it sounds, is asking them to give up their game in many ways. Although I would still sacrifice my preferred VO for a better overall package, I think we should be more considerate before we ask the same of others.
Also, to those who don’t speak Japanese but hate on the English dub, the Japanese audio can also be really corny sounding as well. I think the performances are better as a whole, but it’s far from perfect.