HDR retrofit with Special K and dgVoodoo 2

Tired of the washed out vanilla look? Have an HDR compatible monitor or just want to raise contrast and saturation? Check this guide!

Intro

Game looks good with HDR using Special K (needs HDR compatible monitor)
Frankly vanilla appears washed out to my eyes. A lot of it is due to the stylistic choices of the devs which you'll either love or hate. You can do a lot to rectify this with ReShade alone (non-HDR) though that won't be covered much in this guide.

Vanilla:

Non-HDR High Contrast+Saturation:

I like high saturation so if it looks like too much color that's just the way I set mine up.

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HDR Screenshots:

Can only be seen properly with an HDR compatible monitor
https://l5vkzor.sharing.bublup.com/ui/landing_page?item_id=001-i-03f28ed3-0130-4ebf-99d7-847b364f23ef
https://l5vkzor.sharing.bublup.com/ui/landing_page?item_id=001-i-5dfc3622-0104-4451-afb0-b687e1115641

There are probably better places to take screenshots of to show off the HDR but I admittedly haven't gotten far in the game yet.

Requirements

Requires:

• Special K (for HDR monitors ONLY): https://wiki.special-k.info/
  
• dgVoodoo2 (for HDR monitors ONLY): http://dege.fw.hu/dgVoodoo2/

Optional:

• HD character textures: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=341723902
  
• Nvidia Profile Inspector anti-aliasing: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2472973603
  
• ReShade (for non-HDR ONLY, incompatible with Special K): https://reshade.me/

Install

dgVoodoo converts the game from DX9 to DX12 so that Special K can HDR retrofit. It is NOT NEEDED if you're only planning on using ReShade.

I was crashing with the default settings so use the dgVoodoo GUI to set output API to D3D12 then under DirectX tab set VRAM to 4096 and enable "Fast video memory access"

Use the x86 dgVoodoo 2 D3D9.dll and place it in the game directory (steamapps\common\Valkyria Chronicles)

Special K can be installed with their installer. The game must be launched through their launcher. Follow the prompts on screen to open Special K and go to the HDR config and set it to on which will require a game restart. Then you can change the HDR settings to taste from there.

ReShade install and configuration is beyond the scope of this guide as this is primarily for HDR. You can look up guides on how to increase contrast and saturation with that. Be careful to only download from their main website reshade.me as there are fake sites. All I can say is that you'll want to select the DX9 option when installing.

Wrapping Up

What's nice is that Special K can change the windowed mode to borderless which isn't a setting in the game launcher. Overall the game looks much more vibrant and of course darker blacks and brighter whites.

Enjoy!