Do you play visual novels with or without voice acting?

[ratboi]

So I personally turn the voice acting off. I don't know why. I think its maybe because I started reading VNs because of love of novels and it just kind of felt weird with it on :/ and it's just something I still do I guess 

[Eclipsed]

22 minutes ago, ratboi said:

So I personally turn the voice acting off. I don't know why. I think its maybe because I started reading VNs because of love of novels and it just kind of felt weird with it on :/ and it's just something I still do I guess 

You be best friends with @Rooke, 

[Darklord Rooke]

Not listening to voices is just the logical thing to do, @Eclipsed  

[Forgetful Frank]

I would prefer the VN I'm reading to have voices, I like hearing the cute girls when they stutter and squee.

[Silvz]

that's a hard question to answer. I mean, I love VNs with voice acting and when they doesn't, I cannot get fully imersed on the story. However, usually, almost always, I don't wait for them to finish before skipping the text, so I almost never listen to them completely.

So yeah, I always, always leave them on - and kind of hate when MCs are unvoiced - but never listen to everything.

The only exception, I guess, is Kanon, where the PS2 voice patch is terrible and buggy

[TheFantasm]

I've gotten in the habit of just setting it to auto when I play just so I can lay down and read. So yeah, voices on.

[DarkZedge]

I do prefer having voices although I can read them without just fine as well, to me it's a nice plus to have and enjoy.

[ChaosRaven]

Usually I have them on, but sometimes if a certain voice is particularly annoying, I switch it off.

Like Natsuhiko in Root Double who forced me to switch off all voices because it was not possible to deactivate just a specific voice. Well, the quality of the voice cast wasn't particularly high anyway, so it wasn't a big loss...

[XReaper]

might sound clichee, but i dont fucking care, since to me a good and believable story is all that matters

[Deep Blue]

with, although it doesnt matter if it's voiced or not.

[wyldstrykr]

voices on, because i cant read the speaker's emotion

[Kabu]

I always leave them on but I'm also perfectly capable of reading and fully enjoying an unvoiced VN.

[dfbreezy]

Can't really enjoy a vn when it's not voiced... so far the only Vn i was able to do that for was fate/hollow and that was only because i'm a fate fanboy.

[littleshogun]

Well, don't really care too much about voice here. But for preference, I guess it's a bonus if voiced VN had recognizeable seiyuu to me here. And of course there's some good unvoced VN out there. I think for now let's just said that I'm slightly prefer voiced VN.

[Suzu Fanatic]

A tone of voice and emotions inflected in auditory verbatim help immerse me in a story a great deal more then without. But it's merely a plus - i can live without, but def. a plus.

[TexasDice]

I used to read without voices, because squeeky girls yelling japanese through the entire neighborhood would've been way too embarrassing. This made reading VNs using the full-screen text format almost impossible to do, because they never put the name of who's speaking before a sentence and you have to figure out who talks by yourself. 

 

After a year or so, someone told me that headphones exist and I felt like the biggest idiot on the planet. 

[Canicheslayer]

I prefer voices. However I have no problem to read or play a VN without voices.

[Ningen]

As for me, I think some emotions can only be expressed through voices.

Also, one of the best things (if not the best) about H-Scenes are the voices of the girls.

Voices help understand the text as well, if your Kanji-proficiency isn't that good...

Saying voices are one of the main selling points for me wouldn't be exaggerated.

Though I've also played good VNs without Voices(checking Kanji all the time gets tiring, though)

[Mr Poltroon]

Voices are mostly optional. I can enjoy a really good cast, and there are voices which are just briliant -- see Steins;Gate's Okabe Rintarou -- but I don't think voices are all that important, and can do perfectly well without them -- see Higurashi and most Original VN's.

[ratboi]

13 hours ago, Rooke said:

Not listening to voices is just the logical thing to do, @Eclipsed  

YYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

[Scorp]

I do not really care. I read voices, I read unvoiced, important to have a good believeable (and with eroscenes, if they are supposed to be) story and good characters.

Actually the perfect would be like it was in some console RPG - so just a few lines are voices, to get an idea what is character voice is. Much better, than have whole 60-hour story voiced, no one listen to them in full anyway.

[Narcosis]

I don't mind good voice acting (it's actually helpful for learning japanese and at times, grasping things better in general), but I won't cry when they aren't voiced. Certain games can benefit a lot from good VA as much as there are titles, which will do perfectly fine without them; worst thing to happen is getting voice-overs, where it isn't really required (ENG dubs; murica, why?).

[Daydreamer97]

Voices are a nice bonus but I read pretty fast so I don't always wait for the voice to finish. I started by reading unvoiced vns so it doesn't really bother me if a vn has voices or not. I actually bought G-Senjou no Maou unvoiced because it's cheaper.

[Codesterz]

I only play VNs that have voice acting. This is one of the reasons I do not touch OELVNs.

[kooolm]

I never switch it off. It's way more immersin, at least for me, to actually hear everyone's voice, that's partially the reason why I haven't started hollow/altaraxia yet. Seiyus put a lot of work into it, so it's such a waste to turn it off!

Though it really gets on my nerves when some characters have a very irritating voice (I'm looking at you, Hoshimemo) or some supporting characters are left unvoiced (Rewrite).