Hey there. Sam Mullen here, producer over at the SEGA/Atlus office managing the SEGA lineup, and I can answer this question for you.
For the last couple of iterations of the Yakuza series, the game translations were handled by our friends over at Inbound Games, an independent SF-based J2E loc firm that SEGA has worked with closely for many many years on many many games (hit them up up, I highly recommend!). Yakuza 5 was handle by them, and Yakuza 0 was as well. I think we can agree they do outstanding work.
But for Yakuza 0, we are really trying to not only take it up a notch, but to take the opportunity to reevaluate our approach to the series localization in general. So even after we got the game text back from Inbound, Scott and his team have spent many hours further polishing the dialogue, taking almost a craftsman-style approach by listening to the JP voice along side the text to make sure the English text set against the Japanese voice feels as natural as possible.
The end results of this fine tuning are very subtle, but the game really shines in a way I've never seen in a Yakuza game before, especially the cutscenes and cabaret club sections. Creating a bilingual experience, one that is very Japanese but still English at the same time is a real challenge, but Yakuza 0 makes it happen. Maybe I'll get Scott to make a video about it.
In any case, whether you are a long term fan, or someone who has been wanting to jump but has hesitated: this is it, guys. This is where the journey begins.
Wow, so nice to hear how Yakuza translations are taken seriously again. Only spells good things for future games..
