Eight Years Later, The Xenoblade Chronicles 2 English Dub Remains A Cringe Masterpiece

I Wish All English Dubs Were As Wild As Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Published Aug 5, 2026, 11:00 AM EDT Jade King is Lead Features Editor at The Gamer and University of Sussex journalism graduate with 10+ years covering the video game industry. She has been seen in outlets such as Trusted Reviews, Kotaku UK, VICE, and more over the years covering everything from the latest releases to major events to in-depth interviews. She loves nothing more than speaking with devs, creatives, voice actors, and so many others about the passion behind their craft and bringing that into the hearts of readers everywhere. I adore Xenoblade Chronicles 2, but I’m also not ashamed to admit it’s a little weird. Monolith Soft went in a notably different direction with its sequel as it settled on a more vibrant overall aesthetic and cutesy anime character designs that weren’t afraid to offer fan service. I would describe the first Xenoblade as grounded by comparison, but it was this sharp diversion that helped to make its successor so memorable. It was bold, brash, and so, so beautiful. And despite its inconsistent direction and a handful of truly mediocre performances, I’d offer the same praise to its overzealous English dub. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has a truly special localisation that, much like its predecessor, was handled by Nintendo of Europe and features a number of talented British actors bringing its characters to life. At times, it can be so weirdly authentic with its accents and dialects that it feels like a local theatre production. You could play the recently released Switch 2 edition in Japanese and still have a wonderful and arguably more authentic time, but so much love has gone into the dub that I simply can’t walk away from it as I replay this game for the first time in almost a decade. As a Welsh girl at heart, it warms my heart to see adorable cat girls offer up the dulcet tones of The Valleys. Why Is The Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Dub So Memorable? I might be missing a couple, while select NPCs and narratively important characters boast unique accents all their own, but I think this is how things are broken down in Xenoblade 2: Gormott — Welsh Uraya — Australian Mor Ardain — Scottish Lefteria — Northern English Tantal — Received Pronunciation (fancy English) Blades and Torna — America This pattern extends to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 as well, albeit with species we haven’t seen before boasting new types of British accents to broaden the scope of localisation. It is so ridiculous but so charming at the same time, going further than other JRPGs by bringing its world to life through unique accents that reflect our own world. There is nothing worse than playing a game, and everyone has American accents for some reason, or little effort was made to properly flesh out exactly how a fantasy setting’s dialects might change with new regions or even planets. Another game with tremendous effort put into this is Final Fantasy 16. It is the champion of Geordie accents in video games, without a doubt. It reminds me of the more recent Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies on the Nintendo DS, which put so much personality into its localisation. Despite having no voice acting, all the accents possessed by different towns and cities shone through the dialogue. But not all the voice acting in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is particularly good. In fact, I would describe a lot of it as cringe-inducingly bad at times. Protagonist Rex struggles to lend emotional moments the weight they deserve with his exaggerated accent, while extended scenes that require characters to scream out in anger or sadness are unintentionally hilarious here when they definitely shouldn’t be. The direction is off, which is odd, given that the same director worked on Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and that game’s dub is significantly higher quality. And Why I Wouldn’t Change It For The World The timing between dialogue can be out of touch, and characters like Tora make me want to jump into traffic, but hearing Catrin-Mai Huw’s tremendous performance as Nia makes it all worth it. Having previously acted in Welsh-language shows like Pobol y Cym, her accent is so authentic it takes me back to my hometown of Lampeter as I walk through the streets hearing all manner of Welsh voices being exchanged. Nothing will ever beat Nia calling someone a one-eyed monster in a flash of anger, only for all the surrounding characters to react in sudden embarrassment. It’s so Welsh that it would feel right at home in an episode of Gavin & Stacey. Speaking of, that was Huw’s first role. I also love that Xenoblade Chronicles as a series is likely to expose lots of gamers around the world to these accents for the very first time, regardless of how ridiculous they might be. I’ve always been astounded by how many accents Britain has despite its geographically small size, and there is no better way to pay homage to that fact than a gargantuan JRPG. It’s something that makes this series so undeniably unique, and even if the quality wavers, this lovable charm is something I wouldn’t change for the world. Now it’s time to place bets on what corners of Britain Monolith Soft we're going to see in Xenoblade Genesis next year.