End game spoilers: How would you describe...

[tools guy-kun]

How would you describe Terada in the end? Honestly I beat this game on New Year’s Eve on my PS4 and have never came to a final conclusion about him yet. Would you say he was really a hero on Kiryu’s side? Or would he have actually killed Kiryu if he had the chance?

[Ymir2k]

That plot twist was totally retarded in my opinion

[changtau2005]

I believe he would have killed Kiryu if he could, yes. The whole plan was to take Kiryu out of the picture and then set off the bombs across Kamurocho as retribution for the events 26 years ago, that much was clear. However, since we saw Terada himself admit that he felt that something was off about Takashima, I believe he held onto the fuse for the bomb, as a hidden card up his sleeve, if you like, in case Takashima went off-script, for example, if Takashima tried to use the bomb against him. He turned out to be right after all. He could have put the fuse back in and that bomb would have been as deadly as ever.

What of his creed? Well, Takashima confidently spilled his plans to take over the JingWeon mafia (as well as Kanto and Osaka yakuza) for himself, so as the current JingWeon boss, Terada wasn't going let him get away with it if he could help it, so he triggers the bomb - it's not that he has many options left - and he's the only one who knows it's a dud; it puts Takashima off-balance, and that proved sufficient to be Takashima's undoing.

As for whether he was actually trying to help Kiryu... I think it's along the lines of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", you know? What he said about Kazama though, it seems genuine enough. It's just that he chose to put his creed first.

Fascinating character, isn't he, for someone who gets killed first thing in the game.

[Legato Bluesummers]

the japanese idyllic, fantasy view of the underworld in the Yakuza franchise is more of a modern spin on the old world Japan with its Samurai, vagabonds and oaths. It's really hard for western people to grasp this ♥♥♥♥ unless you've been introduced to enough media or are interested in Japanese history and culture. Terada believed in his destiny due to his blood but also believed in his debt to Kazama (which he outright says in Kiwami 1). There wasn't really a contradiction to his character at any point from what I remember. I agree with changtau in his assessment; Terada put his oath above even his debts but tried to reconcile them as best he could. I think the writing was just so hamfisted at this point (the ending) trying to tie everything together, it just seemed like a bad soap opera. It was really lacking in pacing and doing those bossfights ample justice with the epic buildups of Yakuza 0. when the stupid zombie toe blades guy has better fights with Kiryu throughout the entire game than anyone else, something went wrong somewhere.

Takashima was one of the most interesting characters so far in this series, but I just felt like his motivation came off as flat; power/evil for the sake of power/evil. I don't think it was a flaw in the characterization of Takashima moreso it was the insufficient amount of time given to his character. This was also a serious problem, imo, in K1, the pacing was just way too fast to really care about the characters in any meaningful way, which is why i always recommend playing Y0 first, since then and only then can the events of K1 have some sort of impact. Anyways, the Takashima problems were evident in Ryuji as well, except instead of a mysteriously boring motivation of any cartoon villain, we were given too many reasons and many of those reasons were contradictory. He wants to blow up Kamurocho at the beginning of the game, then at the end he never wanted to blow it up. He didn't care about the Jingweon oath, but he still allied with them knowing they were crazy ♥♥♥♥♥. He wanted to consolidate his power by himself, but was constantly scheming in the shadows with other people. He even let Sengoku and Takashima try to weaken Kiryu/Tojo as much as possible before he even did anything, except for his """invasion""" (triple quotes) of Kamurocho, where you fought maybe 12 guys in 3 locations.

I still think it was overall a really fun game, it just had some flaws imo.