is there a strategy guide for Metal Max Xeno?

[quintazar]

i decided to start a new playthrough of this game recently on my ps5 and even after years of off and on playing it, some of the terminology in this game still makes no sense at all and on top of that, this franchise is a freaking anomaly here in the west (US here).

there's boderline NO solid info about anything in this game ANYWHERE on the internet outside the gamefaqs forum for it.

for example, the "road to ace" system which provides permanent buffs when you accumulate enough points via completion of various "challenges".

HP+ = higher max HP...combat skills+ and driving skills+ raise the respective character stats... but then you have "Muscle+" which raises arm strength...which is supposed to translate to the strength stat.

Nerve+ increases speed which isn't a character stat unless they meant agility.

weapon IQ boosts damage with weapons while secret aim boosts armament damage. ??? apparently those are human weapon damage and tank weapon damage respectively?

see what i mean? i know of one and ONLY one website that has ANY reliable information about this game and it's japanese which means relying on google or yandex translation and both produce word salad results most of the time for the site. there's no reliable info about this game ANYWHERE here in the west and the majority of article sites never even went into detail about much of it when the game WAS still new and fresh.

so, i'm left scrounging for any kind of information HOPING a strategy guide of some kind exists in english. cause if none do...then i've learned about all i can about this game over time.

 

also, machine translations...why do you LOVE saying "Balkan" when a word is clearly VULCAN in english?! to think i once thought machine translations were improving at some point in the past...no, they reached a certain point of progress then stalled and were abandoned!

[PixelBoy]

  On 2/12/2024 at 8:29 AM, quintazar said:

also, machine translations...why do you LOVE saying "Balkan" when a word is clearly VULCAN in english?! to think i once thought machine translations were improving at some point in the past...no, they reached a certain point of progress then stalled and were abandoned!

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I don't know about guidebooks you are looking for, but I know something about Japanese language and machine translations, so I can guess what's happening there.

Japanese language doesn't have "V" or "C" and all words are composed of syllables. This is what creates something called "katakana English". When you transliterate "vulcan" to Japanese, it becomes "barukan". If you do the same with "balkan", as it happens, it also becomes "barukan". Japanese readers would know which is meant from the context.

Now, when some machine is trying to translate katakana words into English, it really doesn't know if the word should be "vulcan" or "balkan", it could also be "Barkan" which is a product name for many different products. Balkan is probably the best guess the machine can make. If and when AI systems become more intelligent, they can make more educated guesses in the future.