STATUS

IMO, voice acting has to be really really really good to be worthwhile. In most professional games, to me, the acting is so bad that it's worse than pure text without voice acting. For whatever reason, even highly-paid professional voice actors seem to have a way harder time making their dialogue sound believable than normal actors. At least with plain text I can imagine the lines being said correctly and dramatically by someone who isn't making a silly voice. So it's hard for me to imagine amateur voice acting being an improvement over plain text.

I might just be a curmudgeonly old fart who hates newfangled things and pines for the PS1 era though.

To what extent will you go with it? Like all text or certain parts, battles?

I think if people have the option to turn it off then I say go for it!

Personally, I'm not a fan of having text read to me like I'm 6 years old. It's totally appropriate when there's action and cutscenes going on, but usually in an RPG, the characters just stop to chat and the player's focus of attention goes exclusively to the dialogue window anyway. It's completely unnecessary.

But that's just my opinion.

I'd say worry about voice acting once the game is actually made.

I only mind voice acting when it's really, really bad, like awful.

But when it's good or even better It adds to the game.

Aye, for most low-budget productions .. it's a bad idea.
It's a worry for when you're about done, though, as pointed out.

It can add to the game only when done really well - and you can worry about it once it's all done and written out. The fact it usually comes as the default option is why people will notice it. And bad voice acting can ruin even the best lines.

On the positive, it can add nicely-sounding voices and adjustments to tone, incoroporating situations (like reading things while doing push-ups), but it also adds a pace to the dialogue. For short cutscenes and little bits this can be really nice to sit back and listen to and feel it pop out more.
For text-heavy games this can also be a terrible idea, because reading is (usually) significantly faster than listening to the dialogue being read out. Listening to every and all dialogue lines can thus make you sit with the lines much longer than you would otherwise, and may disrupt the player's pace.

I remember replaying Devil Survivor Overclocked with voices, and it just .. took all the fun out of me because I was just waiting around. Once I took the voices out I had a blast.
Diablo III's voice acting was superb! The different accents and variations from voice actor to voice actor was a joy to listen to .. but boy, like hell will I wait around half a minute to each and every NPC out there if I can just progress to the next dialogue line with the press of a button. Having the option to skip, or overall disable them can be neat, or necessary depending on how much they are implemented.

author=Ratty524
The only RPG Maker game where I've heard voice acting was this:


Just... Do it right or don't do it at all.

Hearing you laugh at this game's voice acting and ridiculous mechanics made it all worthwhile.

Seems to establish two precedents for voice acting: either make them really good and professional-like, or make them so awful that at least they're fun to laugh at.