Fixing and enhancing Final Fantasy XIII-2

This guide's main purpose is to make sure players have the best experience of this game without facing technical issues like lower frame rate and crashes that can ruin the gameplay experience. The guide also covers some additional content restoration mods, and visual enhancements that can be applied to the game by tweaking some of the graphic settings from the graphics driver side and with mods.

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Prerequisites

Before proceeding with this guide, I recommend to start afresh with a clean game install mostly to avoid issues that can arise with previous mod installs and modifications done to the game files.


Make sure that you have not installed the game in your C drive. Steam by default will set up an directory in the C drive when you begin installing the game and you will have to change that directory in the installer window to another drive on your PC. If you had installed it to your C drive, then please uninstall the game and reinstall it to another drive by re downloading and installing the game to the new directory on the other drive.

Due to the issue of false flagging from third party anti virus software vendors, this causes some of the patches and mod installers linked in this guide to falsely get flagged as a virus thereby preventing them from installing correctly. to ensure that this doesn't happen, temporarily disable or uninstall the anti virus software until you have successfully fixed the game and installed the necessary mods by following this guide.

This only applies to third party anti virus softwares and if you have none of them except windows defender, then do not disable or uninstall the latter.

Verifying Game Integrity

Now if you have the game already installed on a drive which is not the C drive, then use the Verify Integrity of game files..option to check if all the files are properly downloaded and installed.

You can access this option by right clicking on this game title from the left side of your steam library, select Properties, and in the new window that opens, click on the LOCAL FILES section in which that option should be present.

Doing this verification should check your game files and re download only the files that were modified, got corrupt somehow due to download..etc thereby making your game installation clean.

Drivers and Operating system

Lastly make sure that you are running the latest version of Windows 10 or 11 operating system with up to date graphic drivers.

If you are using windows 11 and are not seeing the right click menu that is shown in the images from this guide, make sure to select the Show more options option from the right click menu. that should bring the correct right click menu on screen.

The Launcher

Similar to the first game, this is the launcher you are greeted with when you launch the game for the first time. You can use this to customize the visuals, and the audio language.


If you want the game to run in fullscreen or windowed mode, then there are options for that in the Screen settings. this setting has to be set to Fullscreen Display Mode as the windowed mode option limits you from customising the resolution.

There is the Resolution settings tab which allows you customize the game resolution.

If you want to play with English or Japanese audio, the option to do so is in the Sound settings tab. This option is not available if you got the ASIA region version of the game.


Here are some settings that could help in getting the game look good as well run better if you have a low end hardware.

Anti aliasing
The Anti aliasing setting is the least demanding setting in this game. You can crank it up to higher values if running on your native screen resolution, to reduce the jagged lines seen on the edges of 3d models and objects.

Note if you intend to follow the DSR method in this guide, then set this to 2x as you will end up hurting performance, if set to x16.

Shadow resolution
Shadow resolution is the setting that you might need to do a bit of tweaking to get it looking right.

At lower settings, the shadows will look softer but jagged at the edges with the shadow volume having noticeable artifacts. as you go to higher settings the jagged edges and the artifacts on the shadow volume reduces, but the shadow volume starts to look hard and dense making them look quite blocky.

I would suggest setting the shadow resolution to 4096 x 4096.
this setting produces shadows that do have jagged edges but thankfully it is not easily noticeable. the benefit with this setting is the somewhat softer and neat shadow volume which makes the shadows look a bit better when they are cast on the character's face.

Caution: if you intend to follow the DSR method in this guide and have an slightly mid end GPU, then set this to 4096x4096 itself as the higher 8192x8192 setting will end up in lowering the framerate of the game significantly.


Once you are done setting up in the launcher, Untick the checkbox that says Do not show this Window again, and click on the Start game button for a test run.
This is to see if the game opens correctly and if in case it doesn't open, then skip to the FF13Fix & Bug fixes section of this guide.

If the game opens correctly, then Skip the Intro cutscene by pressing either the ENTER key on your keyboard or the A or Cross button on your controller.

Once you are in the main menu, press the ESC key and select the Yes option in the small window with your mouse cursor to close the game.

The Problems

A lot that can be annoying for new and returning console players alike.

Severe Problems

- Inconsistent 60fps

- Lacks Vibration support that is present in the console versions

- Stutters, if you are playing without a controller

- Constant crashes due to the game's virtual memory being limited to 2gb

- Surround sound is broken, thereby causing an buzzing sound

- Missing DLC's from the Console versions,

- Broken rain translucency, which makes the rain in the game look bad

Non severe Problems

- Poorly encoded Pre rendered cutscene audio, making it slightly inferior to the PS3 version

- No English audio option for Asia/Japan version of the game

Crash fix

The game allocates just 2gb of memory to use due to the large address aware bit value not being set in the main executable file. because of this bit value not being set, the game will start crashing as soon as it exceeds 2gb of memory usage.

Factors like Nvidia's ingame overlay, Steam overlay, Steam cloud, and any resource intensive applications that is running in the background along with the game can cause the virtual memory usage to spike up and crash the game.

This 4gb patcher program will set the large address aware bit value in the executable file, thereby allowing the game to use more than 2gb of memory.

We will still need to disable Steam cloud as that may end up corrupting your save files and also crash the game in some rare cases.

Disabling steam cloud for this game

These steps are subject to change with newer steam client updates

- Right click the game title in your steam library, and select Properties.



- Disable the toggle for the Steam Cloud feature



- Close the window and this should disable Steam cloud for the game.

Now follow the 4gb patch installation steps below.

4gb Patch Installation

- Download the file FFXIII-2 - 4gb Patcher (v1.0) from this website:
https://mega.nz/file/b45wCIiB#Y6zHzAx8DW_IL5T2KCjWy3Q4fjVErhi9wlceN0snXck


- Right click on the downloaded zip file and select properties.



- Then in the bottom of the properties window, untick the Unblock checkbox and then click on the Ok button.



- Now extract this zip file with winrar or 7zip software and you will get these following files



- Click on the FFXIII2_4gbPatcher application file and a program should open along with a message box, prompting you to select the FFXiii2Launcher.exe file.



- Click Ok on the message box and in the small window that opens, navigate to your game's root directory which is the FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 folder. the FFXiii2Launcher.exe file is present inside this folder.



- After selecting the launcher file in the small window, click on the Open button at the bottom of the window and you will be presented with three options.

The first two options are for installing or removing the patch, while the last option is for exiting this installer program.


Press the appropriate key and the patching process will begin. once the patch is done installing, you will be prompted with a message box saying that it has finished installing the patch. click on the Ok button in the message box and that should close the program.


- Now in the folder where you had extracted the zip file, select all of the extracted files, then right click and select the delete option.



This should fix the crashes resulting in a stable gameplay experience.

FF13Fix & bug fixes

The FF13Fix patch

The performance and the stuttering issue can both be solved with the same FF13fix patch made by rebtd7. thank you once again for the fix if you are reading this guide rebtd7.


Download the latest version of the fix from this github releases page:
https://github.com/rebtd7/FF13Fix/releases

If you were hearing an buzzing noise during the test run of the game from the launcher, then download this version of the fix from the link here:
https://github.com/rebtd7/FF13Fix/releases/download/1.4.6_2/FF13Fix_146.zip


- After the file is downloaded right-click on the file and extract it with WinRAR software's Extract Here option.

You can see the below image for reference:
The version linked for the Buzzing noise would have a different version in the name.



If you are using 7Zip software then right click, select 7Zip and the Extract Here option.
You can once again see the image for reference:



- Go into the extracted FF13Fix_164 folder, and select all of the files inside it. right click and select Copy.
Do note that the dinput8.dll file is changed to d3d9.dll in the latest version of the fix. If you downloaded the version linked for the buzzing noise, then the extracted folder will have a different version, and there will be a file called dinput8.dll instead of d3d9.dll. the FF13Fix_Licences folder will not be present in this version.



We will now have to copy these files to the location where the game's main executable file is present. the location is give below:
"steamapps\common\FINAL FANTASY XIII-2\ alba_data\ prog\ win\ bin"


To get to this location first select this game title on your Steam library, right click and select Properties. then in the new window go to LOCAL FILES and select the Browse... option.

This should open the root directory from where you can get to the bin sub folder where the main executable file is present.

You can now follow the screenshots linked below to get to the bin folder and paste the files there.

- Open the alba_data folder


- Open the prog folder


- Open the win folder


- Open the bin folder


- Right click and select the Paste option here. that should copy the fix's files in here and it should look like this after copying the files:

OR
If you had installed the fix mean't for the buzzing noise, it should look like this:


And that's it.

If you want to turn off vibration, decrease the vibration strength (max 2.0) or cap your frame limit to 30 or 60, then you can do all of this by editing the values in the FF13Fix.ini file that you copied here.
There's information provided in the ini file itself on what values to edit and what to change, so please follow that correctly if you want to make any changes.

If you are using an AMD RDNA GPU, you can set this DiscardUIVertexBuffer option to true and see if it improves the performance a bit.
Be warned that this particular option is still experimental and if its causing any graphical issues in game, then set it back to false.

Buzzing noise

If you are running a surround sound setup or a gaming headset, only then will this issue occur.

A buzzing noise is heard along with the other sounds in the game.

Please do the following only if you had heard this buzzing noise in your game during the test run.

Before proceeding with the steps below, make sure that you have installed the right version of the FF13Fix mean't to be used if faced with this issue.

Go to the root directory of the game where the launcher file is present. this is from where we had accessed the alba_data folder before when installing the FF13Fix.

To get to this root directory, select this game title on your Steam library, right click and select Properties.
then in the new window go to Local Files and then select Browse Local Files. that should open the root directory of the game which is where the launcher file is located.

- Once you are in the root directory, right click on the FFXiii2launcher.exe file and select Properties.


- In the new window that appears, select the Compatibility tab.

- Under the compatibility tab, tick the Run this program in compatibility mode for: box.


- In the drop down menu below it, select Windows 8.

- Click on the Ok button and that will close this window.

Now open the FFXiiilauncher.exe file and in the launcher, click on the Start Game button.
We are launching the game to ensure that the launcher's compatibility settings that we had tweaked is applied to the game.

Once you are in the main menu, press the ESC key and select the Yes option in the small window with your mouse

And that's it. this should solve this buzzing noise issue.

FF13Fix & bug fixes (contd)

Audio channel Positioning

This is mainly for stereo sound device users and this setting can be changed anytime

From Windows 10 onwards, Microsoft introduced this spatial sound feature which processes the audio and gives the illusion of the audio playing in a three dimensional space. I am not sure what exactly this does but I am assuming this is probably some sort of virtual recreation of a surround sound speaker setup with HRTFs and stuff for stereo channel based audio devices.

Now this particular feature does not play well with this game and with it being enabled, the game ends up thinking that the sound setup you have is surround based and ends up causing that buzzing noise. With the previous compatibility setting step, we prevented that buzzing noise from happening and can experience the sound in a surround based setup.

As this game has a broken surround sound implementation, when your speaker setup is stereo based, this spatial sound option ends up making some of the sound sources in the game play at a lower volume than they normally should. we will have to disable this option to ensure that all of the sounds play properly at the right volume.


For Windows 10 users:

- Right click on the sound icon in taskbar and set the Spatial sound option to Off


- This should fix the audio positioning for stereo sound users.



For Windows 11 users:

- Right click on the sound icon in the taskbar and select Sound settings:


- In the new window that opens and under the output section, click on the audio device that is shown.
As I use headphones, I would select that as my audio device:


- Then in the next window, scroll down a bit and set the Spatial audio setting to Off:


- This should fix the audio positioning for stereo sound users

Performance stabilization

This is an additional step only for Nvdia graphic card users which makes sure the game's performance at 60fps remains a bit more stable and consistent. AMD graphics card users can skip this step and proceed to the next one.

Right click and open the Nvidia Control panel.

Select Manage 3D settings and go to the Program settings tab in the menu. click on the drop down list at the center and select Final Fantasy XIII-2(ffxiii2img.exe).
If this game name does not appear on the drop down list, you will have to add it by using the Add option.

Click on the Add Option and this will open the Add window. Scroll through this list and the game should be displayed here in this window. you will just have to select the game in the list and then double click.

Now If the game is not displayed in the Add window then we will have to add the game's executable which is the ffxiii2img.exe file, by using the Browse option.

Click on the Browse option and then navigate to the location of the ffxiii2img.exe file.
this file is in the same location, where you copied the FF13Fix files which is:
"\steamapps\ common\FINAL FANTASY XIII-2\ alba_data\ prog\ win\ bin"


Once the game is added it should appear in the Program settings tab.

If you are unable to scroll through the options and change it then you are probably running a laptop.
There will be an option right there to change the Preferred Graphics Processor and you have to select that option and from the drop down list select, High Performance NVIDIA Processor.

Now you will be able to scroll through the options and tweak them.


Scroll down through the set of options in the list and set the Power management mode option, to Prefer Maximum performance.


Click apply at the bottom, wait for the screen to flicker and after the apply and close dialog box disappears, close the Nvidia control panel. This should give you an even better performance.

Non Severe Problems

Pre rendered cutscene audio is poorly encoded on the PC version

The audio for the pre rendered cutscenes are encoded at a lower bitrate compared to the PS3 version.

Please check the Better Quality audio for Pre rendered cutscenes mod mentioned in the Mods and more enhancements (contd) section of this guide.

No English audio for Asia/Japan version of the game

There are three versions of the game that is being sold on Steam depending on which region you purchased the game from. these are the three versions that are available for purchase on steam directly. I am basing this with the help of Steam DB site:
FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 - this is the NA version
FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 (RU/IN/CIS) - this is the EU version and the one I have.
FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 (JAPAN/ASIA) this is the Asian and Japan region version which does not come with the english audio.

If you want the english audio, then refund your copy of the game if you can on steam and get the version sold on Square Enix's online store. This version on the Square Enix store will give you an Steam CD key for the EU or NA version of the game. this is an legal method that I can recommend for those who bought the game, is in refund period and with a card or payment method that allows refund transfers to your card directly.

If you are stuck without the ability to refund then buy the game again on the Square Enix store or just play the game with the Japanese audio.

Essential Patches

Console Content Patch

Some of the DLC's from the console version is not available in this PC version. this patch makes all of them accessible in the PC version and also enables Serah's XIII outfit which is not available in any other version of the game.

This amazing patch is one of the many patches and mods that are made by Krisan Thyme for this game, which restores all of these DLCs into this PC version. thank you so much for all these patches and mods, if you are reading this guide Krisan.

Caution: This patch has to be installed first before you install any other patch or mod into your game files.

- Download the file FFXIII-2 - Console Content Patch (v2.4).zip from this website:
https://mega.nz/file/XxIBAAIY#GaoD_Rp9SkC8NY4h63Ng2P0vErPto24iFn_pWDvR8ak


- Right click on the downloaded zip file and select properties.



- Then in the bottom of the properties window, untick the Unblock checkbox and then click on the Ok button.



- Now extract this zip file with winrar or 7zip software and you will get these following files



- Click on the FFXIII2ConsoleContentPatch application file and a program should open along with a message box, prompting you to select the FFXiii2Launcher.exe file.



- Click Ok on the message box and in the small window that opens, navigate to your game's root directory which is the FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 folder. the FFXiii2Launcher.exe file is present inside this folder.



- After selecting the launcher file in the small window, click on the Open button at the bottom of the window and you will be presented with three options.

The first two options are for selecting the voiceovers and the last option is for exiting this installer program.


Press the appropriate key that matches the voiceover by which you are playing the game and the patching process will begin. this will take a bit of time to install and during this process, please make sure that you do not interfere with any of the files on the drive where the game is installed.

Once the patch is done installing, you will be prompted with a message box saying that it has finished installing the patch. click on the Ok button in the message box and that should close the program.


- Now in the folder where you had extracted the zip file, select all of the extracted files, then right click and select the delete option.

Leviathan's Tears Patch

The PC port's rain is not transparent as seen in the console versions and is too white, thereby making the rain look quite ugly as it pours. this patch fixes the issue and makes the rain look as good as the console versions.

The Leviathan's Tears patch by Krisan Thyme fixes the rain drop textures by making it a bit softer, which overall makes the rain a lot more pleasing to look at.

- Download the file FFXIII-2 - Leviathan's Tears (v1.3).zip from this website:
https://mega.nz/file/7whg2ZxT#ic80oCD0nUGjIof5_ODkONCM5fRnilSf-1fgLWxZ12o


- Right click on the downloaded zip file and select properties.



- Then in the bottom of the properties window, untick the Unblock checkbox and then click on the Ok button.



- Now extract this zip file with winrar or 7zip software and you will get these following files



- Click on the FFXIII2LeviathansTears application file and a program should open along with a message box, prompting you to select the FFXiii2Launcher.exe file.



- Click Ok on the message box and in the small window that opens, navigate to your game's root directory which is the FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 folder. the FFXiii2Launcher.exe file is present inside this folder.



- After selecting the launcher file in the small window, click on the Open button at the bottom of the window and you will be presented with three options.

The first two options are for selecting the voiceovers and the last option is for exiting this installer program.


Press the appropriate key that matches the voiceover by which you are playing the game and the patching process will begin.

Once the patch is done installing, you will be prompted with a message box saying that it has finished installing the patch. click on the Ok button in the message box and that should close the program.


- Now in the folder where you had extracted the zip file, select all of the extracted files, then right click and select the delete option.

Mods and enhancements

There are some really cool mods available for this game and in this section, I will be listing those mods with a brief write up on what it does to the game, and with a link to the page from where you can get it.

Remember that if you want to uninstall any of the mods mentioned in this section of the guide, you have to use steam's Verify integrity of games files option which will then re download the original unmodified files of the game.

The drawback of this option is that it will remove the Console content and leviathan's tears patches from your game files, thereby requiring you to re install all of them once again. So be careful with what all mods you want to install on to your game.

Install the mods in the same order that its written here. you can skip an mod if you do not like it and move on to the next one. the FF XIII-2 HD mod has to be installed last after most of these mods are installed.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 Proper button prompts

The PC version comes with Xbox based button prompts and although the prompts are correct, the icons lack the correct button colours which the 360 version of this game has. the game also does not come with the Playstation controller icons, which can make it somewhat difficult to play this game with a Dualshock controller.

This mod by Krisan Thyme, comes with the options to patch in either the 360 controller icons or the Playstation 3 icons in your game file.

- Download the file FFXIII-2 - Console Button Prompts (v2.2).zip from this website:
https://mega.nz/file/y5hnTaxD#UYIwXgfPlN9rNLjzLexa5KovcdgYck9QJZSPI307Aq8


- Right click on the downloaded zip file and select properties.



- Then in the bottom of the properties window, untick the Unblock checkbox and then click on the Ok button.



- Now extract this zip file with winrar or 7zip software and you will get these following files



- Click on the FFXIII2ConsoleButtonPrompts application file and a program should open along with a message box, prompting you to select the FFXiii2Launcher.exe file.



- Click Ok on the message box and in the small window that opens, navigate to your game's root directory which is the FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 folder. the FFXiii2Launcher.exe file is present inside this folder.



- After selecting the launcher file in the small window, click on the Open button at the bottom of the window and you will be presented with three options.

The first two options are for selecting the voiceovers and the last option is for exiting this installer program.



- Press the appropriate key that matches the voiceover by which you are playing the game and you will next be prompted with button prompts options.


Press the appropriate key that matches with the button prompts that you want the game to display. pressing either one of the keys, should begin the patching process.

Once the mod is done installing, you will be prompted with a message box saying that it has patched the button prompts. click on the Ok button in the message box and that should close the program.


- Now in the folder where you had extracted the zip file, select all of the extracted files, then right click and select the delete option.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 Monster Glow Begone mod

This optional mod by Krisan Thyme removes the glow effect that makes the monsters in your paradigm pack glow, when its night time ingame.

Check the image of with and without the glow effect below to understand better.

With Glow

Without Glow

If you are ok with the glow effects, then you can skip this mod and proceed to the next mod. if not then proceed through the following steps.

- Download the file FFXIII-2 - Monster Glow Begone Patch (v1.4).zip from this website:
https://mega.nz/file/CxBCCTDL#fmgSEjVkTvMrYkwdI8AgECpegvh4gfKi1Suy-oP9CjA


- Right click on the downloaded zip file and select properties.



- Then in the bottom of the properties window, untick the Unblock checkbox and then click on the Ok button.



- Now extract this zip file with winrar or 7zip software and you will get these following files



- Click on the FFXIII2MonsterGlowBegone application file and a program should open along with a message box, prompting you to select the FFXiii2Launcher.exe file.



- Click Ok on the message box and in the small window that opens, navigate to your game's root directory which is the FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 folder. the FFXiii2Launcher.exe file is present inside this folder.



- After selecting the launcher file in the small window, click on the Open button at the bottom of the window and you will be presented with three options.

The first two options are for installing or removing the patch, while the last option is for exiting this installer program.


Press the appropriate key and the patching process will begin. once the patch is done installing, you will be prompted with a message box saying that it has finished installing the patch. click on the Ok button in the message box and that should close the program.


- Now in the folder where you had extracted the zip file, select all of the extracted files, then right click and select the delete option.

Mods and enhancements (contd)

Important: Install the mods in the order they are listed here in this section. if you don't want to
install a mod then skip it and go to the next one.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 Apotamkin's Closet mod

This optional mod by Krisan Thyme adds in two new Summoner garb outfits and a white mage outfit for Serah.

Summoner and White mage Outfits

Summoner's garb Rydia

Summoner's garb Yuna

White Mage Classic

If you are fine with the default outfits itself, then you can skip and proceed to the Crash fix (read properly) section.


- Download the file FFXIII-2 - Apotamkin's Closet (v1.2).zip from this website:
https://mega.nz/file/rhwUVYiB#_GWF6-ppWPfGDIGU4KSG74JIg1k8prptGYJlzpMv61Y


- Right click on the downloaded zip file and select properties.



- Then in the bottom of the properties window, untick the Unblock checkbox and then click on the Ok button.



- Now extract this zip file with winrar or 7zip software and you will get these following files



- Click on the FFXIII2ApotamkinsCloset application file and a program should open along with a message box, prompting you to select the FFXiii2Launcher.exe file.




- Click Ok on the message box and in the small window that opens, navigate to your game's root directory which is the FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 folder. the FFXiii2Launcher.exe file is present inside this folder.



- After selecting the launcher file in the small window, click on the Open button at the bottom of the window and you will be presented with three options.

The first two options are for selecting the voiceovers and the last option is for exiting this installer program.


Press the appropriate key that matches the voiceover by which you are playing the game and the patching process will begin.

Once the patch is done installing, you will be prompted with a message box saying that it has finished installing the patch. click on the Ok button in the message box and that should close the program.


- Now in the folder where you had extracted the zip file, select all of the extracted files, then right click and select the delete option.

Better Quality audio for Pre rendered cutscenes

This is a mod I made that replaces the lower quality audio tracks of the PC version's pre-rendered movie files with better quality audio files from the PS3 version.

You can download the mod from the link below and from the Files section.
https://www.nexusmods.com/finalfantasyxiii2/mods/2

The instructions for installing this mod is provided in the mod's description page. So please follow that carefully when installing this mod.

FF XIII-2 HD

This mod by MJB, enhances the quality of the textures and the character models used in the game, making it look sightly better than the base game. Thank you MJB if you are reading this guide for this mod.

More than the textures, this mod mainly increases the overall poly count of some of the character models, making them look a bit more realistic shape wise.

Before installing this mod, make sure that the game is able to run with all of the above mods installed. If the game is running fine, then install this mod.

Download the mod from this page below:
https://www.nexusmods.com/finalfantasyxiii2/mods/1?tab=files

Make sure that the place where you will extract the downloaded zip file has atleast 20gb of space.

On extracting the zip file, you will get the following files.


Open the FFXIII-2 HD file, the one highlighted in the image above and it should open a new window.
Follow the instructions that will appear in this window and the mod will be installed successfully.

Additional Graphical Enhancements

This section of the guide covers the Enhancements that can be applied to the game to make it look better with the help of the graphic settings available from your graphic driver.

Anisotropic filtering

For Nvidia Graphic Card users

- Right click and open the Nvidia Control panel.

- Select Manage 3D settings and go to the Program settings tab in the menu. click on the drop down list at the center and select Final Fantasy XIII-2(ffxiii2img.exe).

- Then In the below submenu, select Anisotropic filtering, and set the value to whatever you prefer. (x8 or x16 is better)


- Click apply at the bottom. wait for the screen to flicker and after the apply and close dialog box disappears, close the Nvidia control panel.

For AMD card users

I don't own an AMD card and can only point you to this page on how to get Anisotropic filtering working on your GPU. Follow the Anisotropic filtering section.
https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/dh-012#faq-Anisotropic-Filtering

This should give you sharp and good looking textures for this game.

Downscaling

Warning: GeDoSato is not supported with the FF13 fix and so I am not recommending to use it for this game in this guide.

Nvidia DSR and AMD VSR does just what GeDoSato does. Unfortunately not all cards support this feature, which is why many still use GeDoSato for older games and for this one as well. I will assume that those playing this game has a modern GPU capable of doing this and won't recommend GeDoSato over the FF13 fix if your card doesn't support DSR or VSR respectively. just play the game with higher AF x16 at your native resolution.

For Nvidia Graphic Card users

First check if your graphic card supports DSR in this webpage.
https://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/dsr/supported-gpus?field_gpu_type_value=desktop-gpus

Older laptop dedicated graphic cards with Optimus technology do not support DSR.
You can check if your laptop supports DSR by right clicking on the desktop and opening the Nvidia control panel. then check the left side of the panel and see if you have the Display and Video categories apart from the Manage 3D settings category.

If your graphic card supports DSR then follow these steps.

- Right click and open the Nvidia Control panel.

- Select Manage 3D settings and go to the Global settings tab in the menu. Here, scroll down and select DSR Factors.

- On selecting it, click on the Off button which will bring a small drop down list of resolutions to scale the game upto.

I will recommend the 4x one if you are having a 1080p screen. Your choice if you want a lower resolution. After checking it, the DSR Smoothness option should be clickable.

- Set the DSR smoothness to 0%

Click apply at the bottom, wait for the screen to flicker and after the apply and close dialog box disappears, close the Nvidia control panel.

For AMD card users

I don't own a AMD card, and can only point you to the related page on how to do it. follow the Virtual Super Resolution section and the game exe is the ffxiii2img.exe located in the
" FINAL FANTASY XIII-2\ alba_data\ prog\ win\ bin "
https://www.amd.com/en/resources/support-articles/faqs/DH-012.html#DH-012-Filtering

Using DSR / VSR resolution in your game

After enabling DSR for your respective graphic cards, open the FFXiii2Launcher.exe file located in the FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 folder. select the new resolution listed in the screen settings option.

I had setup 4x more the resolution than my native 1080p resolution to upscale, which is 3840 x 2160 (4k) listed here in the launcher.

Set Anti aliasing to x2, as it can cause frame dips due to it being at x16 for our DSR resolution.

After you are done setting up in the launcher, tick the checkbox Do not show this Window again, and click on the Start game button.
You will get a small message box telling you how to alter settings again. click on the Ok button and the game will launch.


The game will now look great on your screen due to the increased resolution boost provided by DSR / VSR.

Steam Cloud alternative

Steam Cloud

Steam cloud is an automated cloud based save upload system used by games on Steam. it backs up your save files automatically online and you can download and use the save files on a different PC or the same PC.

But it doesn't work smoothly for some games and this game especially has some issues with it.

Which is why you had to disable steam cloud for resolving the crashes, and some of you may be wondering now how do I back up my save files, if I want to play the game in future on a different PC or if you formatted your PC and reinstalled Windows?


If you had started playing the game following my guide by disabling steam cloud, then the save files would have been stored in the following location in your C: Drive or the drive where you have windows installed:
"C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\SquareEnix\FinalFantasyXIII-2\save"

In this folder save, your save files will be stored. to backup these files, I suggest going a bit back to the SquareEnix folder.
Right click, copy this folder and then Right click paste it to wherever you want. this way you have backed up your save files.

If you want to use the save files on a different PC, you have to copy paste the save files you backed up from before to the following location in the new PC:
"C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local"



If you started playing the game with steam cloud, then disabled it after following my guide, then the save files before you disabled steam cloud is stored in the following location:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\<Your user id>\292140\remote"

Select all the files present in this remote folder, Right click and then select copy.

Go to this following location:
"C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local"

Inside the local folder, create a new folder and name it as SquareEnix
then create another new folder inside that SquareEnix folder and name it FinalFantasyXIII-2
then inside this FinalFantasyXIII-2 folder, create another new folder and name it as save.

Inside the save folder, Right click and select the paste option. the save files will be copied into this folder.

And that's it. the game should load these save files and you can continue playing on them.
You have to manually back up the save files even in this method as well.

Credits

Thanks to

rebtd7 for the FF13 Fix.

Krisan Thyme for the majority of the mods.

MJB for their texture and model enhancement mod.

[Ren_Kium]

Is there a reason why it would be bad for the game to be on the C (main) drive? My laptop only has that drive, but it works just fine

[miko90okim]

@Surihix The only solution for the buzzing sound issue is to disable Windows audio enhancements, but none of the patches helped. I followed your guide because it had the most reactions, but other groups had different links for the 4gb patch NTcore and mentioned applying it to the img exe file. I uninstalled and reinstalled the game without patches, and it works fine now. Maybe I don't need the patch anymore. However, the ffxiii2img exe part is missing from your guide.

[miko90okim]

@Surihix You didn't mention applying the patch to the ffxiii2img exe. You specifically said to click on the FFXIII2_4gbPatcher application, which opens a program and a message box asking for the FFXiii2Launcher.exe file. Then, you instructed to click Ok and navigate to the FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 folder where the FFXiii2Launcher.exe is located. After selecting the launcher file, you said to click Open, which presents three options: install or remove the patch, or exit the installer. After pressing the right key, the patching process starts, and once it's done, a message box appears saying the patch has finished. You then advised to delete the extracted files from the zip.

[Surihix]

@miko90okim
The launcher file is used as the base to locate and patch the main ffxiii2img exe file. so no the launcher file is not patched here.

I am surprised the buzzing noise fix did not work. if your PC is using the default sound drivers, it should straight up work without any issues. if its using any external sound drivers, then there are chances of it not working properly.

The game crashing like that probably indicates that some file got corrupt or maybe one of the mods did not install correctly, which in turn corrupted a game file. can you tell me what all mods and patches you installed to your game?

The reason why I said to not install the game on C drive, is to ensure that windows doesn't interfere with the installation processes of the patcher and the mod installer programs.

Also there is no trojan or viruses in any of the programs linked in the guide.

[miko90okim]

This didn't work at all! First of the 4gb patch should be applied to ffxiii2img.exe and not FFXiii2Launcher.exe . I followed your guide and when I got to this point I already thought something was not right. And I still followed it. Nothing in this guide worked not even the sound buzzing fix. Some people posted this could be a trojan or something. Now I am worried. When i started the game right during the very first fight I encountered the weirdest glitch/crash ever. Lighting was running on her horse and suddenly the entire level crashed like melting ice. Super weird. Also you mentioned to install the patch on another drive than the C drive.

[zvahl]

this worked great and i am extremely dumb so thank you very much

[Chitunda]

This is amazing, thank you so much!
If anyone could help , that'd be great. I installed all the mods but the buttons mapping doesn't seem to work at all. I'm using a ps4 controller but I see xbox buttons

[xen]

youre so amazing oh my god

[KamitoRings]

im not doing all that but thanks anyway.

[Syv]

For some reason the game instantly crashes when I boot it with the ff13fix files installed, but when I remove it it runs just fine. the patch works fine with ff13 but 13-2 I can't run with it ;-; anyone have tips?