Tales of Symphonia - Troubleshooting, Known Issues

[Crache]

Issues which have been fixed are removed from this page. To see what has been fixed since launch refer to the patch notes.

• Tales of Symphonia - Patch Notes

If you are used to the GameCube version, it's good to know what improvements the Steam version has over it: PC/GameCube comparison

Table of Contents:

1. Crashes / Won't Start
   
2. Performance
   
3. Graphics
   
4. Sound / Voice
   
5. Input
   
6. Language
   
7. Game Manual

1. Crashes / Won't Start

Immediate crashes:

• Try changing the resolution setting in the config file to be the same as your desktop resolution or the native resolution of your display:
  
  
  • Right click on Tales of Symphonia in your library and click Properties.
    
    
  • Select the Local Files tab and click Browse Local Files.
    
    
  • Open the CustomConfig.conf file, change the settings and then save it. If changing the resolution did not help, you can also set fullscreen=0 to force windowed mode which should prevent a crash if this is the issue.
  
  
  
• Disable your anti-virus or add an exception for the game's entire directory before running Tales of Symphonia as people have reported certain security features of their AV hindering the game launch.
  
  
• Install the VC++ Redistributables found in the game directory.
  
  
  • Right click on Tales of Symphonia in your Steam library and select Properties.
    
    
  • Go to the Local Files tab and click Browse Local Files
    
    
  • Go into the _CommonRedist\vcredist\ directory and run all of the vcredist installers under both the 2010 and 2013 directories. It's important that you install even the x64 ones, as they have reportedly fixed crashes for people where installing only the x86 versions did not.

General Crashes:

• Disable the Steam Overlay.
  
  
  • Right click on Tales of Symphonia in your Steam library, then click Properties.
    
    
  • Uncheck the "Enable Steam Overlay" checkbox and click OK.
  
  
• Close any 3rd party software which tries to add an overlay to graphical applications like recording or streaming software, MSI Afterburner, GeDoSaTo, etc. For recording and streaming, check the borderless windowed mode tip under the Graphics section.
  
  
• Verify the integrity of the game files.
  
  
  • Right click on Tales of Symphonia in your Steam libary and click Properties.
    
    
  • Go to the Local Files tab and click Verify Integrity of Game Cache.

Crash when skit coincides with combat:

This is unconfirmed, but it's reported that if you activate a skit at about the same time an enemy encounters you, the game crashes. There's no known solution, but it's safe to recommend that you should at least make an effort to save your game relatively often to reduce the chance that you lose significant progress if it ever does happen.

2. Performance

30 FPS Lock

The original Gamecube version of Tales of Symphonia ran at 60fps, but when it was ported to PS2 it became locked at 30FPS which then persisted into the PS3 release. The Steam version is based on the PS3 version and the framerate remains capped at 30FPS.

It reportedly runs at 40FPS if you use Windows XP SP3 compatability mode, so try this:

• Right click on Tales of Symphonia in your Steam library and click Properties.
  
  
• Go to the Local Files tab and click Browse Local Files.
  
  
• Right click on TOS.exe and click Properties.
  
  
• Set the compatability mode to Windows XP SP3.

[/list]

3. Graphics

Everything is blurry:

• This is a bug that only some people experience which was introduced in the 2016-02-22 update. The only known fix is provided by Kaldaien's TSFix here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/372360/discussions/0/412446292759260120/

Resolution:

• You can change the display resolution under the settings menu both from the main menu or while in-game. However, the render resolution is 720p and is upscaled to your chosen resolution. In order to fix this, you can use GeDoSaTo.
  
  
  • If you want a quick already configured solution, you can download the package here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/372360/discussions/0/458607699626558474/
    
    
  • If you want to download and configure it yourself, you can get it directly from: http://blog.metaclassofnil.com/?p=824

Borderless Windowed Mode:

If you want to record, take screenshots, multitask, etc without it crashing then you can force it into borderless windowed mode. Then you can record your desktop or switch applications without issues while the game still looks fullscreen. You can use either of the programs below to do this:

• https://github.com/Codeusa/Borderless-Gaming/releases
  
  
• http://grismar.net/shiftwindow/

4. Sound / Voice

Some sounds are too loud:

It's been reported that some sounds are abnormally louder than others and the game's volume settings don't apply to them, so these sounds may not be getting adjusted.

• There's no fix for this yet, however you might be able to work around it by keeping the volumes at maximum, but then changing your system's volume. That way all of the sounds should be at their proper volume, while still being adjustable. Obviously not a desirable solution, but might be enough to prevent it from annoying you in game.

Crackling audio:

• Try going into your system audio settings and set the audio quality of your primary device to 44Khz. Tales of Zestiria had similar crackling issues and lowering the audio quality resolved this issue.

Missing voiceovers during cutscenes:

• Supposedly there are a few cutscenes near the middle and end of the game where voiceovers don't play if you have the language set to Japanese. It's unknown if these were cutscenes that were added/modified during the port from the original to the PS2.

Missing voiceovers during skits:

• Skits only have voiceovers in Japanese, as English voiceovers for those never existed. If you'd like to hear voiceovers at those times, you'll need to go into the game settings and switch your audio language to Japanese.

5. Input

New Game is still the default menu selection after you've already started a new game:

This is annoying to many users, as it's easy to accidentally press the button to start a New Game instead of tapping down once to select Load Game. Starting a New Game begins a long unskippable section, so you have to either watch through it or restart the game in order to get back to loading your save.

No input works:

If you Alt+Tab or switch between fullscreen and windowed mode several times during a play session, all input may cease to function.

• Restarting the game will fix this.
  
  
• Switching the game to run in Windowed mode will prevent this from occurring.

Gamepad doesn't work:

• If you have multiple gamepads plugged in, disconnect the extras so that only one controller is connected. Tales of Zestiria also had issues related to multiple controllers being plugged in.
  
  
• If you have only one controller plugged in, you might have some gamepad virtualization software installed that has a secondary gamepad driver which Tales of Symphonia is detecting. You can try disabling or uninstalling that software to see if it helps.
  
  
• If your gamepad isn't XInput compatible, it might not work with Tales of Symphonia. You can try installing an XInput emulator like x360ce: https://github.com/x360ce/x360ce

Certain actions can't be completed with gamepad or keyboard rebindings:

• if you assign the left analog stick to keyboard cursor keys, it will cause blocks to be unable to be pushed/pulled, due to how the game uses arrow keys for menu scrolling regardless of what your key binds are.
  
  
• Supposedly you are unable to jump in combat using the gamepad, while you can with the keyboard keys. It might be possible to bind one of your gamepad buttons to this keyboard action, but I didn't see a jump action in the bindings menu.
  
  
• Some actions require multiple buttons to be pressed simultaneously and depending on the keyboard bindings, your keyboard/OS might not register the keys being pressed at the same time. For example, Ctrl+G might work, but two letter keys like E+G might not.

6. Language

The language setting isn't remembered between runs:

• When you create a new game, your current language setting is stored in your save file. So if you started your game set to English, then you switched it to Japanese from the main menu before loading that game, it will switch back to English once you've loaded the game. In order to keep it set to Japanese, you need to go into the game settings after you have loaded your save and change it, then save again. After that, any time you load your save it will be set to Japanese.

Typos and missing text:

There are a number of typos and missing text still remaining in the dialogue throughout the game. A lot of language issues were corrected in the first couple patches, but there are still some which remain in cutscenes.

A reference for many of these issues can be found here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/372360/discussions/0/412446292769130296/

7. Game Manual

Namco Bandai hasn't released a PC version of the game manual, but you can refer to the PS3 manual:

• https://support.bandainamcoent.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/417/325/tales-of-symphonia-chronicles---instruction-manual-ps3

[Tatsuya]

You sure it's denuvo?
Everything i've heard is it's VMProtect.

[Crache]

Originally posted by Tatsuya:

You sure it's denuvo?
Everything i've heard is it's VMProtect.

If you make a copy of the sec*.tmp file that gets created in your temp directory on execution, then rename it to yada.exe and right click on it to view Properties, you'll see "Denuvo GmbH" listed under Digital Signatures.

From what I've heard, Denuvo and VMProtect are commonly used together.

[Tatsuya]

Originally posted by Crache:

Originally posted by Tatsuya:

You sure it's denuvo?
Everything i've heard is it's VMProtect.

It's unclear if VMProtect is used at all, but the SDK DLL is there. However, I know for sure Denuvo is used.

Then bamco can go to ______, now i'll have to consider reinstalling windows because of them, never again bamco, never again.

[Crache]

Originally posted by Tatsuya:

Then bamco can go to ______, now i'll have to consider reinstalling windows because of them, never again bamco, never again.

Denuvo doesn't tamper with Windows as far as I know and a lot of other claims about it have been false. Reinstalling Windows would be a waste of time.

[Tatsuya]

Originally posted by Crache:

Originally posted by Tatsuya:

Then bamco can go to ______, now i'll have to consider reinstalling windows because of them, never again bamco, never again.

Denuvo doesn't tamper with Windows as far as I know and a lot of other claims about it have been false. Reinstalling Windows would be a waste of time.

It would get any trace of denuvo off my system, which is what i want.

And noone knows what denuvo does exactly, that's the point, that and i have seen denuvo's effects before.

If you want to use denuvo, go ahead, i won't, i said it before and i'll say it now, denuvo is a plague on the pc, and i refuse to be a part of it.

[Red]

Originally posted by Tatsuya:

And noone knows what denuvo does exactly, that's the point, that and i have seen denuvo's effects before.

What effects exactly?

[16 TIMES THE MIN REQUIREMENTS!!!]

Originally posted by Tatsuya:

Originally posted by Crache:

Denuvo doesn't tamper with Windows as far as I know and a lot of other claims about it have been false. Reinstalling Windows would be a waste of time.

It would get any trace of denuvo off my system, which is what i want.

And noone knows what denuvo does exactly, that's the point, that and i have seen denuvo's effects before.

If you want to use denuvo, go ahead, i won't, i said it before and i'll say it now, denuvo is a plague on the pc, and i refuse to be a part of it.

You get the occasional weird stuttering and weird bugs in phantom pain from time to time XD even in offline mode by just staring at a wall, so yeah i doubt it isn't harmful like so many apologists believe...

Any kind of ♥♥♥♥ that puts additional unnecessary load ( even if small ) while playing is bad for gaming. That's why i only have the essential windows services on while gaming for a true smooth experience even though i'm running on an expensive SSD.

It has been proven a lot of times that DRM potentially introduces bugs, stuttering and load issues in multiple games.

[Crache]

Originally posted by kainevil:

You get the occasional weird stuttering and weird bugs in phantom pain from time to time XD even in offline mode by just staring at a wall, so yeah i doubt it isn't harmful like so many apologists believe...

I think a lot of people are on a Denuvo witchhunt, because they don't understand it. Burn the witch! While it's possible it might be causing less efficient use of a processor's cache lines which could reduce the efficiency of a game that needs to squeeze out every bit of performance, I doubt there's anything seriously sinister going on. A lot of claims have been made with little to back them up, so I'd hold judgement. Games being unoptimized at release is standard procedure now, but suddenly people blame it on Denuvo now instead.

[Tatsuya]

Originally posted by Rednavi:

Originally posted by Tatsuya:

And noone knows what denuvo does exactly, that's the point, that and i have seen denuvo's effects before.

What effects exactly?

A friend of mine got DA:I even though i warned him against it, one of the things he noticed, was abnormal ram usage, and even though people claim it doesn't, denuvo does seem to write alot to the C drive from what i've seen, maybe it was a bug when he ran it, but it certainly looked like it did.

[Crache]

Originally posted by Tatsuya:

A friend of mine got DA:I even though i warned him against it, one of the things he noticed, was abnormal ram usage, and even though people claim it doesn't, denuvo does seem to write alot to the C drive from what i've seen, maybe it was a bug when he ran it, but it certainly looked like it did.

http://www.denuvo.com/#page-4

[RegalStar]

Originally posted by Tatsuya:

Originally posted by Rednavi:

What effects exactly?

A friend of mine got DA:I even though i warned him against it, one of the things he noticed, was abnormal ram usage, and even though people claim it doesn't, denuvo does seem to write alot to the C drive from what i've seen, maybe it was a bug when he ran it, but it certainly looked like it did.

Unless my task manager/resource manager is lying to me, ToS isn't doing anything of the sort.

[Tatsuya]

Originally posted by Crache:

Originally posted by kainevil:

You get the occasional weird stuttering and weird bugs in phantom pain from time to time XD even in offline mode by just staring at a wall, so yeah i doubt it isn't harmful like so many apologists believe...

I think a lot of people are on a Denuvo witchhunt, because they don't understand it. Burn the witch! While it's possible it might be causing less efficient use of a processor's cache lines which could reduce the efficiency of a game that needs to squeeze out every bit of performance, I doubt there's anything seriously sinister going on. A lot of claims have been made with little to back them up, so I'd hold judgement. Games being unoptimized at release is standard procedure now, but suddenly people blame it on Denuvo now instead.

I don't really care what denuvo is overall, i despise DRM, why should i tolerate DRM?
DRM exists to leverage control over a product to the publisher, it has little to do with the P word in most cases, DRM gives publishers the control of the content that consoles give them, while also letting them sell it on a very large market they haven't tapped, whilst still keeping control.

I've sworn off EA, Ubisoft and more recently, square enix and konami over DRM, this little incident is making me strongly consider adding bandai namco to the list of "do not buy games from", what they do with symphonia will decide that. but right now it's not looking good.

I am not their product, and i also have my pride, which definitely helps.

That said, we didn't know the implications of what starforce did until after it was dead (starforce could literally and im many cases did kill your disk drive, since it installed into the drive's bios).

[Tatsuya]

Originally posted by Crache:

Originally posted by Tatsuya:

A friend of mine got DA:I even though i warned him against it, one of the things he noticed, was abnormal ram usage, and even though people claim it doesn't, denuvo does seem to write alot to the C drive from what i've seen, maybe it was a bug when he ran it, but it certainly looked like it did.

http://www.denuvo.com/#page-4

Denuvo was made by the same people who made the sony rootkit, as well as securom, i don't trust anything they say, if they let an outsider in, that could be trusted, and they said that maybe i'd actually believe some of it.

[Crache]

Originally posted by Tatsuya:

I don't really care what denuvo is overall, i despise DRM, why should i tolerate DRM?

Denuvo isn't DRM. Denuvo does not care whether you own the game or not, they just don't want you tampering with the executable.

[Tatsuya]

Originally posted by Crache:

Originally posted by Tatsuya:

I don't really care what denuvo is overall, i despise DRM, why should i tolerate DRM?

Denuvo isn't DRM. Denuvo does not care whether you own the game or not, they just don't want you tampering with the executable.

A rose by any other name, just because it doesn't mess with rights management, doesn't mean it effectively function in the same way anyway, just another way to try and get away from the dreaded DRM term, by my definition, DRM is a program or code in a piece of software that restricts access to the function or control of the program, denuvo does that.