It seems that online gaming fans have lost some trust with SEGA when it comes to them releasing uncensored Yakuza games due to them censoring Yakuza 3 when it came out. Should you be worried about Yakuza 0? Well, no because SEGA has gone on the record to state that Yakuza 0 will be 100% uncensored when it hits PlayStation 4 in January 2017. Not surprising considering that SEGA knew censoring Yakuza 3 was a mistake after its release and released the uncensored Yakuza 5 last year.
SEGA confirmed that all gameplay modes will be intact in Yakuza 0, that means those shady girly video parlors will be accessible to your Western eyeballs. Make sure to pre-order Yakuza 0 if you wan the day one ‘The Business Edition’ featuring extra Yakuza swag for free. I would ask you if censoring Japanese games for the West is a good idea, but I already know the answer is no. Right?
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Trimming vs Censoring?
The way I viewed it, they trimmed out excessive text based minigames. Like the dating sim. That is not the same thing as censorship. Personally, I think it is a great idea to trim off those hostess bar sequences. They are a completely nonsensical part and doesn’t correlate with the main story.
Look at Yakuza 1. Kazuma is on the quest to find the love of his life. If you were in his place, would you make pitstops to flirt with random hostesses?
The best part is that the number of useless trophies went down in Yakuza 3.
If the dating sim is such a high demand commodity I would recommend SEGA try it out as purchasable DLC released later. This way, the game can be localized quickly and those who really want to play the irrelevant mini games can pay for it. Let’s see how much demand their really is for that sort of stuff.
I believe Yakuza 3 was a victim of hyperbole and false reports of main game content being trimmed or censored.
I agree with cube… Yakuza 3 was brought over on a shoestring budget by a die hard group within Sega of America and they had to make cuts to aspects of the game that a) were optional and b) would have been prohibitively expensive to localize. Then they got torched by various internet commenters, many of whom were likely Sega haters who look for any opportunity to pile on rather than actual fans of the series. In any case, it’s because of the efforts of those within SoA and the tough choices they had to make that the Yakuza series is even still published in the West.
On a more philosophical tangent, I have to say that I think the use of the term ‘censorship’ when it comes to sexy nonsense in Japanese video games getting cut from Western releases is really a misplaced and over-dramatic use of the word. Real censorship occurs in various serious situations around the world and many people face serious consequences in fighting against it. Most of the people whining about ‘censorship’ in video games are relatively well-to-do, yet disgruntled, consumers with nothing of importance at stake, and they have mistaken their own ennui for righteousness.
Sega very very rarely ever censors their games, Yakuza 3 was one of those very rare exceptions and for good reason. It almost never got localised but Sega’s insistence to give it another shot was what led to this.
*^ If you want to even call it that rather than ‘trimming’ to meet a very tight localisation budget that is.