Which version of a game is the one meant to be played?

To begin with, I fell for the "You better learn Japanese" meme. However, I've come to realize that this has created a problem. When I do reach a high enough level in Japanese, how do I determine which version of a game is the one that I play? I know this isn't a hard question for the obvious stuff like…say Call of Duty. The superior versions for those games will always be the Western releases. And, all the stuff coming out of Idea Factory, those will nearly always be better with the Japanese version.

What I'm asking about is where stuff begins to get a little tricky. For example, there's Little King's Story. Is the version of the game "meant to be played" the region with the first release (So, the Australian/European version), or is it the version originating from the country of the developer (The Japanese version because Cing is a Japanese company). To add on top of that, now we have New Little King's Story of the Vita. So, does that mean the Vita version is the version of the title "meant to be play", or is it a nice add-on and the Wii version is the one "meant to be played"?

Now, to get into a different area, what about the games that have an English dub, but were originally designed with the Japanese market in mind, such as The House of the Dead series and the original Bayonetta? And, within the same realm, what about the Japanese series that have one of their titles developed in the West, such as THotD: Overkill, Lost Planet 3, Blaster Master: Overdrive, and the Silent Hill series since Origins? For all of these titles, am I suppose to play the Japanese version or the Western version?

And, to finish things off, what about the games that have regional differences just because? Dead Or Alive 2 has more costumes and better balance in the Japanese release than the original Western release, and most of the original THotD titles had the blood colored green for the Japanese release while later changed to red for the Western release.

So, with all of this, which version of a game is the one meant to be played? What version of a title is suppose to be held up as the "developer's vision" or the "definitive experience" when there's so much difference between everything and they're changing all the time?
And, for those sour about me bringing up LP3 and Silent Hill, I'm not saying that the games are good. That's not what I'm discussing. I just used those titles because they were the first ones to come to mind for the example that I needed.

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Is it violent?
Play the western version.

Is it sexy?
Play the eastern version.

whichever one your autistic ass wants. this didn't need a thread, you fuckwit

You play the better one.

it helps that japanese video game actors are usually tv/anime/film/stage actors and have been this way since the 90s, so even if you play a western game with the jap dub you'll probably get a more convincing delivery than what you'd get from a fucking ashley burch, or any other video game actor.

It's shocking with a little bit of effort does for a game.

For any Final Fantasy game after 5, you aren't missing much when it comes to the English and Japanese version there isn't much besides a few minor differences - nothing that will ruin or make the game that much better. For example I have been playing 5 on and off (the JP version) on my SFC and the story is so bare minimum that it wouldn't really matter what version you played; I'm not even kidding half the dialogue in the beginning of the game is
「えぇー！？ クリスタルがー！」

For me personally, even though I'm fluent in Japanese, I still find it harder to read games in all kana as opposed to ones with kanji; harder in the sense that sometimes it takes more effort to read, as opposed to just looking at the kanji and knowing the meaning immediately.

I'd have to agree with both of you to a point. While the Japanese voice acting quality in games that are localized from Japanese, take Final Fantasy for example, are much better than the Western ones, if you watch a lot of Japanese media you will notice that most of them are all stereotypes just like we have here. On the other hand you don't have some rather annoying and radical changes, for example in FFXV some of the characters have southern accents, like that annoying gas station attendant broad, and it's fucking cringe as all hell, but in the JP version she just talks like a normal girl.

I don't like the sound of Japanese voices. They cause my ears even more pain than burger grunting.

Bioshit with JP voices is a pretty strange experience