ggf162: I REALLY liked the voice acting in SMT: Persona 4
Atlus USA in general tends to do a pretty good job with VOs for the games they publish. Granted, they do have a tendency to hire the same sort of voice actors, but that's usually because those voice actors are really good and thus have well earned the job.
As for bad voice acting....actually, if I'm honest, I can't think off the top of my head an example of a game that I played and that I thought had terrible voice acting. Granted, there is a lot of PlayStation-era JRPGs that I haven't played (some of which are infamous for cringe-worthy voice acting), so perhaps I just successfully avoided the worst examples. But it probably also has to do with the fact that I'm easily satisfied when it comes to that aspect of a game. For example, the English VO of the original
Gothic is often considered to be awful, whereas I thought it was passable...not
good, but still passable.
The only time I really take note of bad voice acting is when it's specifically pointed out to me, like this gem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bangt7d9vGA You know, say what you will about people who tend to overact, but I can at least appreciate when it seems like the VAs were actually
trying. For me, the worst kind of voice acting is when it seems like the VAs couldn't even be bothered to put up any sort of act and read the lines as though they were ordering coffee.