For Windows 7 DOSbox 72, but I can change to whatever works. Everything works fine I even can get past the character choose page but once it gets to the character select, the game loses the speaking ability.

so i guess you dont own the prebundled gog version?
you could try the newest dosbox v0.74 or a more potent one based on the svn branch: http://ykhwong.x-y.net/
i cant remember complicated changes in the dosbox.conf or any changes at all, it should work out of the box.

if dosbox doesnt work for you, you can always try scummvm, it added support in one of the latest versions, 1.4.0 i think.
http://www.scummvm.org/

im not having the game installed right now so i cant help you any further.