Yakuza 0 is an action-adventure beat 'em up and a prequel to the Yakuza series, set in 1988 Japan during the country's economic bubble era. The game follows two protagonists: Kazuma Kiryu in Tokyo's Kamurocho district and Goro Majima in Osaka's Sotenbori district. Players alternate between their stories as they navigate the criminal underworld, engaging in street fights using multiple switchable combat styles, managing businesses, and participating in a wide variety of side activities and minigames. The game is largely credited with bringing the long-running franchise to mainstream Western attention.

In December 1988, young yakuza Kazuma Kiryu finds himself framed for a murder that took place on a small, seemingly insignificant plot of empty land in Tokyo's Kamurocho district. The lot turns out to be the final piece needed for a powerful crime family's redevelopment scheme, making it the most valuable piece of real estate in the city. To protect those closest to him, Kiryu abandons his clan and sets out to uncover who set him up and why. Meanwhile in Osaka, disgraced former yakuza Goro Majima operates a cabaret club under constant surveillance, desperate to earn his way back into the organization that cast him out. When he is offered a chance at redemption in exchange for carrying out an assassination, Majima must decide how far he is willing to go. Both men are drawn inexorably toward the same conspiracy, where the fates of the powerful and the powerless hinge on a single piece of ground.