The Japanese video game developer and publisher Square Enix (formerly two companies called Square and Enix prior to 2003) has been translating its games for North America since the late 1980s, and the PAL region and Asia since the late 1990s. It has not always released all of its games in all major regions, and continues to selectively release games even today depending on multiple factors such as the viability of platforms or the condition of the game itself. The process of localization has changed during that time from having a one-person team with a short time and tight memory capacities to having a team of translators preparing simultaneous launches in multiple languages.

The companies' first major projects were Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, which each proved successful enough to launch video game franchises. Since then, the majority of the games produced by the companies have been localized for Western audiences, although the process was not given a high priority at Square until the international success of Final Fantasy VII. A dedicated localization department was consequently created at the company's Tokyo headquarters around 1998. Enix remained without a translation department until its merger with Square in 2003. In recent years, the process of localization has undergone changes, mainly due to difficult experiences with various titles. Most major titles are now developed with localization running in parallel to development, with more simultaneous releases and even occasional titles developed in localized form first in order to appeal to the Western market.

The localization staff at Square Enix works mainly from Japanese to English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, as well as Russian, Korean and Mandarin for a number of titles. In 2016, Final Fantasy XV became the first major title from the company to release in Latin American Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. Minor titles are occasionally localized from English to European languages. Prior to the merger of Square and Enix in 2003, Enix did not initially have a localization department and outsourced its Western releases to translators who had no close contact with the original development teams, as was the case for Dragon Quest VII. Square also did not initially have a localization department, though a number of localizers such as Kaoru Moriyama and Ted Woolsey worked with them regularly on a contractual basis in the early 1990s. Moriyama described the work at the time as leaving very little leeway for polishing text due to the limitations of the ROM sizes. She also commented Hironobu Sakaguchi was not willing to put extra work for the English version at that time. Following the massive international success of Final Fantasy VII, however, the company looked into improving the quality of its translated products, since the game was widely criticized for its rushed English translation, which had been handled entirely by Michael Baskett, the company's only in-house translator at the time. To that end, Square tasked Richard Honeywood, originally a programmer, with creating a dedicated localization team in the Tokyo headquarters. His first major project was Xenogears. While there were only two members at first, including Honeywood, the staff grew to include more than 40 employees by 2007, and over 70 in 2015.

Before a translation is greenlit and translators are allocated for each language, the localization, quality assurance (QA) and marketing staff play through a build of the game and sometimes do a focus group study. The localization team's playthrough can sometimes take over 100 hours of gameplay. Once the company greenlights a localization project, a period of brainstorming starts in which glossary, style, naming schemes and fonts are chosen. During the translation phase, voiced sections are translated first. Text files are cross-checked by multiple translators and editors. The text is then integrated along with any graphic and sound changes, and the game goes to quality assurance. During a period of several weeks to up to three months, Japanese QA teams look for bugs while Western QA teams check linguistic issues. The localization team often re-plays the game during this phase, translates the manuals and help out on the guidebooks if these are made. Finally, the game is sent to the hardware manufacturers to be approved.

Challenges for the localization teams include space limitation (due to data storage and/or on-screen space), achieving a natural dialogue flow despite multiple plot branches and script lines being stored out of order, and, when voiced footage is not re-recorded for lip movement, dealing with file length and lip-synch limitations. When the same team works on different games in a series such as Final Fantasy, they often need to adopt different writing styles depending on the setting of their games. Another point to consider is humorous elements that do not translate properly into English, and different cultural expectations about character interactions. The localization process depends on factors such as the development teams' wishes, as well as budget and schedule. Traditionally, translation usually started late in development or after the original Japanese release, but recent titles have been translated during initial development, making the translators appear more like additional planners or consultants and not just translators—this was the case for Final Fantasy XI, XIII, XIV and XV. A few titles, like The Bouncer, have actually been recorded in English first and then adapted to Japanese. The Last Remnant also adopted this approach, featuring motion-capture and dialogue synched to English rather than Japanese actors. This was done due to the company's wish to create a title for the international market.

Many early localizations, like other RPGs both then and in more recent years, made heavy use of antiquated speech patterns and archaic nouns such as "thee" and "thou". Square was not greatly focused on their localizations before the worldwide commercial success of Final Fantasy VII. In later years, the original translators were joined by editors to catch grammar and spelling errors. Prior to the development of Final Fantasy XIII-2, the standard localization process for a title involved dual development between the company's sound and localization departments, which meant that difficulties could arise because of constant changes to dialogue. Starting from XIII-2, in-house development tools, such as Moomle and Rosetta, have been developed to ensure all parts of the process were properly synchronized and centralized. In recent years, English language localization teams have tended to adopt two different approaches to translation and localization: either they remain quite faithful to the original Japanese, or they can make large changes as long as the story outline remains the same. The former method was adopted for Final Fantasy XIII and its sequels, although some alterations were made in order to make the English dialogue sound natural. In choosing voice actors, the company prefers to avoid well-known film and television actors, citing Elliot Page's casting in Beyond: Two Souls as a counterexample. Vagrant Story, generally recognized as a high-quality localization, made some significant changes in style: whereas the original Japanese text was rather straightforward, the English version made use of archaic Medieval and Old English words and dialogue.

Honeywood described Xenogears, his first translation project at Square and the first to be handled internally by the company, as "pure hell". He said that he started to change the company's approach to localization after that game, moving booths to always work very closely with the original development teams, improving communication with them, and introducing full-time editors. Woolsey, an English translator in the SNES era, also had a troublesome time while localizing Secret of Mana, which he said "nearly killed [him]". The translation was completed within a month of the Japanese release as Square wanted to catch the 1993 holiday season. Final Fantasy XIII's localization, handled by Phil Bright and Tom Slattery, was also quite chaotic. According to Slattery, the lack of deadlines, poor communication and synchronization between the various departments, and continuing changes to the script and to cutscenes led to a turbulent development. Due to the script changes, large sections of dialogue needed to be re-translated and re-recorded by the English actors due to lack of necessary emotional drive for the scenes. In contrast, Alexander O. Smith, who is often associated with the Ivalice games, had a good working relationship with Yasumi Matsuno during the localization of titles like Vagrant Story, Final Fantasy XII and the 2010 remake of Tactics Ogre. The two worked closely to ensure that the English versions were faithful to Matsuno's vision. A challenging localization was Final Fantasy X, the first Final Fantasy title to feature voice acting. There, the team faced problems in both making the dialogue more compatible with an English-speaking audience and lip-synching it roughly with in-game characters, whose lip-movement was still for the original Japanese dialogue.

When translating its game titles, Square Enix tries to take into account the cultural differences between Japan and the target territories. This sometimes involves rewriting dialogue or altering graphics, animations, and sounds. For instance, in Chocobo Racing, visual references to the Japanese folk heroes Momotarō and Kiji were changed to depict Hansel and Gretel, since the game was designed mainly for children, and Hansel and Gretel are better known in the West than Momotarō and Kiji. According to Honeywood, trying to explain to the original development teams why some changes are needed can range from "frustrating to downright hilarious". Generally, older development teams trust the translators with making changes while newer teams can be more reluctant, though they usually build up trust gradually. The localization team for The World Ends with You chose to preserve the Japanese elements to ensure the game's cultural aspect remained intact. While localizing Final Fantasy XII, translators Smith and Reeder worked to preserve the original script's meaning while using English dialects to reproduce the Japanese dialects found in the original version to identify factions within the game.