Well...Bugger

[laughingcorvus]

Dunno how, but after managing to FINALLY get the game to work(after months of on and off trying), and now I've managed to basically softlock myself. I'm playing as Yunica and just finally beat Kishigal on V.Easy for the achievement, and now I'm stuck on the first floor. The game won't let me leave, but the NPCs just keep spouting the normal dialogue they'd have, instead of the event-related dialogue that allows the game to progress. Likewise, the flashbacks that would let me finally leave the first floor won't trigger either.

any suggestions?

[Jupiter3927]

I think you have to try to leave the tower to get some progress.
This is the Kishigal from the guilty fire area right?
He appears twice as a boss for Yunica.

[laughingcorvus]

yeah, the first fight against Kishigal. And I've tried that. The game won't let me leave the tower, won't let me go UP the tower via the north door or the teleportation. It also won't give me any of the special dialoge that the NPCs should be spouting at this point of game progress. And it seemingly won't trigger the flashbacks that would progress the plot and allow me to continue the game.

[Jupiter3927]

Maybe a corrupt game file somewhere?
Would going back to before the fight and losing work?

[laughingcorvus]

possibly. but I saved after the battle and before realizing there was a problem, so I'd have to start all over

[Cactoos]

Just for some clarification -- you spoke to every NPC in the tower before trying to leave? It has been a while since I played Origin, but, to the best of my recollection, for me to progress I had to:

1. Talk to all the NPCs (twice incase they gave additional dialogue)
2. Tried leaving the tower (not by going up the tower)
3. Tried moving around the bottom left side of the map

The cutscene starts around the bottom left of the map.

[laughingcorvus]

yup. Talked to all of the NPCs time and again. I think up to three times in my despiration. Tried leaving the floor both by both north and south exits. Ran all around every inch I could think of in the room. top and bottom. left and right...nothing :/ I checked a Lets Play on youtube, and the NPCs had totally different dialogue than I was getting

[Mondae Sundae]

I hate to say it but you may have to start over. There's only so much you can do once you've triggered a severe bug or a glitch, and there's no telling whether it will have an effect on something later on in the game should you somehow get past it.

Did you happen to have the "Don't Play Cutscenes" option turned on at any point?

[laughingcorvus]

yeah, I have the don't play cutscenes on or otherwise the game doesn't run at all. It just crashes on launch. But I think I figured out the problem. I broke sequence by lighting the torches in the room before the goddess statue before the first Kishgal fight using the lightning-element ability(dunno if only the EX version of the character can do it or what), then I went up the tower to the...forget the name. the area with the cursed music that drains your HP. I got up to that point and watched a couple cutscenes in the area before I went back and faced Kishgal.

I think going to that point and triggering those cutscenes set a flag in the game that confused it, preventing me from passing that point properly. I prepeated a similar process with the third playable character, and managed to break the sequence in the same way with them. This let me get a ruby before getting the fire ability, which meant that I wouldn't be able to get fire to max level, since the fire ability still started at LV1 despite my having collected a Ruby already.

[Jupiter3927]

I have a problem where I can't handle cutscenes either but throwing ys into a window instead of fullscreen solved it.

Verifying the game files couldn't hurt at this point.

[laughingcorvus]

I've tried verifying multile times, tried both fullscreen and windowed, tried several different resolutions of the game, and all with no success. For some reason, my computer doesn't like the prerendered videos

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Originally posted by laughingcorvus:

I've tried verifying multile times, tried both fullscreen and windowed, tried several different resolutions of the game, and all with no success. For some reason, my computer doesn't like the prerendered videos

Have you tried downloading CCCP to get its codec pack?

[laughingcorvus]

don't even know what CCCP is. The videos worked fine when we had Windows 7, but now that I'm using Win10, no go. ironically, Win10 actually got gurumin to work right :/

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Originally posted by laughingcorvus:

don't even know what CCCP is. The videos worked fine when we had Windows 7, but now that I'm using Win10, no go. ironically, Win10 actually got gurumin to work right :/

Combined Community Codec Pack. (also an abbreviation for the Soviet Union lol) It contains a bunch of video codecs, as well as a player (Media Player Classic) that allows you to play them. Commonly used for watching anime, but people have reported success in making videos of some Falcom games play correctly after installing it.

[Korzic]

Originally posted by laughingcorvus:

yeah, I have the don't play cutscenes on or otherwise the game doesn't run at all. It just crashes on launch. But I think I figured out the problem. I broke sequence by lighting the torches in the room before the goddess statue before the first Kishgal fight using the lightning-element ability(dunno if only the EX version of the character can do it or what), then I went up the tower to the...forget the name. the area with the cursed music that drains your HP. I got up to that point and watched a couple cutscenes in the area before I went back and faced Kishgal.

I think going to that point and triggering those cutscenes set a flag in the game that confused it, preventing me from passing that point properly. I prepeated a similar process with the third playable character, and managed to break the sequence in the same way with them. This let me get a ruby before getting the fire ability, which meant that I wouldn't be able to get fire to max level, since the fire ability still started at LV1 despite my having collected a Ruby already.

Yep, that's basically what happened, I think, watching later cutscenes, then attempting to go back to a previous one. Something like that, probably. I do know for my Nightmare Yunica run, I picked up the nearby Topaz to help out with the Kishgal fight, but that alone wasn't enough to mess up the story sequence. But if I did some stuff in the Devil's Corridor, things would mess up in the way you described.

Anyway, if you'd like, here's a save file before Kishgal on Very Easy. I confirmed that the game progresses as normal afterwards:

https://archive.org/download/SVDAT038/yso_43.bin

Stick that in your save folder. For me, that location is:

Steam\userdata\64952620\207350\remote\

Hope that helps!

[laughingcorvus]

already made it back and past that point. Still kinda frustrating. Especially with the lack of a skip for the cutscenes