I don't think XIII and XIII-2's voice acting was all that bad, really. X's was rubbish for the most part, particularly in the cases of Yuna, Tidus and Seymour who - at least for me - all had very annoying voices. But in the case of XIII, I think they did alright and am glad for the voice acting - particularly when you're dealing with such things as on-the-go banter which XIII in particular made good use of. I really loved that kind of thing.

What I will concede, however, is that my appreciation of gaming music has dropped dramatically since the advent of voice acting. They always talk over the musical scores and that means I tend to zone the music out and focus on the discussion, which isn't how it should be. The same can be said for constant sound effects such as footsteps. I think XIII-2 got these issues a little more balanced - I'm not sure how, I think they must have simply adjusted various default volumes of the music/effects/voices, but either way it ended up with me actually noticing the music as well as the dialogue.

If you want to see a great example of fantastic voice acting in video games, look no further than The Longest Journey and Dreamfall.