Softlock near the end of chapter 3

[Sawnik]

This is on the Switch version, but I'm not sure where else to post about it and maybe it affects other versions as well.

I'm in the last part of chapter 3 where you go to the upper floors of the hotel, and there's an cutscene on the 11th floor that's marked on the map but it won't activate when I go there. I can take the elevator to the 20th floor where the boss fight is supposed to be, but the room is just empty and nothing happens.

Before this happened I'd had some other issues in the same area - screen blacking out a couple times, some cutscenes triggered out of order and teleported me to a different floor, and I also had another event trigger not working correctly earlier in Chapter 3 where I couldn't enter the waterway the first time you go there because I kept getting the "we don't need to go there" text even though that was where I was supposed to go next, but all of those I was able to fix by restarting the game. This time I've tried that multiple times but it hasn't worked.

I'm guessing I'll probably just have to wait until this gets patched eventually, but I figured I'd check to see if anyone else has run into this and also if there's a way to send a bug report to NISA or whoever in case no one else has done one yet. From what I remember Reverie had a similar issue (which I fortunately avoided) and it took around a month to get patched, so I'll probably be waiting a bit.

[UltraSun]

Hello Sawnik,

While not PC related, I am interested in your predicament. Do you have any saves from before this softlock occurred and if so does the same problem occur if your backtrack using them?

Would be interesting to know what you might have done to get the game into that state, as what you describe reads like a complete progression blocker.
I can't help you on the Switch side of things unfortunately, but I can attempt to reproduce it on the PC version if you have more info to share :)

[Sawnik]

Unfortunately I haven't been keeping any extra saves, and the autosave wasn't far back enough to change anything.

I don't remember the exact specifics, but I remember having to reload a couple of times due to the display getting messed up (the whole screen just covered in blue), and then I think that at some point, I accidentally activated some cutscenes out of order, as I got moved up from the 5th floor to the 11th floor and had to go back through the dungeon in reverse. Probably would've been smart to reload again there, but I figured it'd be fine if I went back and made sure to check everything. I also remember getting the cutscene where you rescue some people and they ask you to look for (the guest party member) after they had already joined.

Since my memory is a bit hazy, I looked up a playthrough on Youtube, and my best guess as to what happened is this: First I got the cutscene where you rescue the group of people, but then had to reload after getting it but before saving due to the aforementioned graphical errors. Then I ended up somehow continuing to the next cutscene after that where you rescue the guest party member, which I'm not sure how because I don't remember finding the ladder that leads up to where the cutscene is beforehand (maybe I activated it the room where the previous cutscene happened? not sure). After the fight I somehow got placed on the 11th floor, in the spot where there's a forced fight (which is the event I can't to trigger). I then went through the dungeon backwards and ended up activating the first rescue scene again with the guest character having already joined. So the game probably now expects me to rescue the guest next, but I can't because I've already done so, and is displaying the event marker on the 11th floor since that's the actual next event I haven't done, but can't trigger it because of the other ones happening out of order.

Hopefully that makes sense, haha.

[Sawnik]

I ended up making a new file and I got back to this point today (fortunately it didn't take too long since I skipped all the cutscenes and NPC dialogue this time - only about 10 hours compared to 36 on the first playthrough).

It turned out I was a bit off on what exactly caused this to happen. First off, I probably should've mentioned I was in high-speed mode before, since that seems to be what caused the issue (when I turned it off I was able to avoid it happening). I did manage to recreate it though - what actually occurred was a after a normal battle, I got put through the cutscenes and subsequent fights in the dungeon out of order. This time around I got the ones on the 11th floor, and then the game got stuck in the loading screen after that and I had to reset.

Videos of the cutscenes activating out of order:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDFf_etg_Ls
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8gbViwAkEM

I also kept a file before the dungeon this time in case there's something else that would be worth testing out.

I also tried turning high-speed mode back on after getting through the first two cutscenes normally with it off, and then after a normal battle it took me to the boss cutscene (skipping the 11th floor one) and I reset again. So it seems like it skipped exactly one cutscene both times (not sure if that means anything though).

I guess the takeaway is that it's probably a good idea to avoid using high-speed mode in this dungeon. Not sure exactly what's going on, but it seems like something about that dungeon specifically (maybe the way it's structured, with everything being stacked vertically?) combined with high-speed mode messes with the cutscene triggers.