Resolved: [Bug Report] Growlanser II [NTSC]

[Kyu1337]

Yep, if you do your savestate early enough (try 5 seconds before you anticipate an IPU use like at the ending of a battle or a special skill use),
you could be lucky and loading the state randomly makes it pass the touch spot.

Sorry it's that crappy but I simply can't find why this game is so picky with the random IPU timing

Edit:
Also the EE cycle rate speedhack might help a bit when you're stuck: Try setting a higher / lower value then.

so otherwise it works, awsome, thanks.

[Reias]

I've tried that as well (especially in battles) the reloading a savestate plan is more of a... 60/40 chance at best, most of the time it won't work, it'll keep hanging even if you save a whole minute before that... and this plan really does frustrate you until you decide to play something else.

I saw a gamefix for Growlanser on pcsx2 0.9.7 in its gamefix section, if that doesn't fix our mysteriously finicky game, what the heck does it do?
This brings me a question, if we get passed like the first... say hour or two, does it still hang. (if anyone had enough patience to get that far and if so, does 2 or 3 have more.... hang ups, I'd rather play the one that doesn't crap up often)
I was looking forward to playing this since it's one of a few SRPG's on the ps2, but playing with savestates have me at my wits end.
And if we're lucky... they might fix this problem in 0.9.8... whenever it comes out, if it does. Though since this problem has been around for more than a few years, it might unfortunately keeps its ugly head around no matter what.
I read in one forum that it isn't the pcsx2 that has the problem, it's the game itself... so eh...

[darkdivine]

Hello Everyone,

Growlanser is a very good game. Too bad the game freezes very often. There are some tricks to avoid freezes, however. I've recently completed the game and I will share some of the tricks.

The game tends to freeze during the following occurances:
1. Save using the save option
2. When strong spells are casted (both in story battles and random battles)
3. End of main story battle

Solutions:
1. Unfortunately, you cannot use the save option. Use F1 and F3 instead to save. You must save very often because you never going to know when it will freeze. Sometimes save to several slots after important missions to ensure that you will not lose the game by accident.

2. Disable spell animation in the config menu. This will save you quite some trouble. GL 3 has the option to do so, not sure if GL 2 has one. However, you can skip the spell animation by pressing X. Thus, when both player and enemy cast spells such as blizzard, soul, meteor, etc. press X repeatedly. The animated video will be skipped and only damage will be shown.

3. Just before the end of the mission, do not press X or any button repeatedly. This will make the game freeze. I've tested this already. Most people tend to tap on the X button at the end of battle to end the "end of mission" screen. Somehow this triggers the screen freeze. Save the game before the last enemy is killed. After the last enemy is attacked and killed, don't press anything, unless there is a message or note that require you to press X. Press it only once and let it end. From my exprience, the success rate is over 90% of the time.

There is no doubt that you will face some challenges but the story line of the game is good. However, the ending is kinda sucks, not much is shown. Anyway, good luck and have fun.

[Shadow Lady]

Trying to use the save points breaks it always or is also random?

[meganova]

The problem can also be fixed by pressing ESC or Suspend/Pause, and then Resume the emulation again when the freeze/hang happen on 0.9.7 builds, but not for the save though.
Tested on 0.9.8, the game seems to save without problem, not sure if the problem persist as you progress more.

[Shadow Lady]

Try with this patch (put it in the PCSX2/cheats folder and enable cheats under the system menu in PCSX2 0.9.8).

Just don't load any previous save states or the patch won't work with those. Patch is meant for the random video hangs, for the other stuff... dunno, try enabling the OPH flag hack gamefix

[rama]

That patch should work for Growlanser 2 and 3 and make both games playable.
Good luck

Edit: This could also work:
patch=0,EE,00109d04,word,00000000

[rama]

Committed in https://code.google.com/p/pcsx2/source/detail?r=4623.

Simply download the attached GameIndex.dbf and put into your PCSX2 0.9.8 directory.

[HollowNinja]

Wait... should I get the patch, or the GameIndex? What does each do, exactly? Do they only fix the saving issue, or the spell animations also? I'm planning to do my playthrough of this game soon, and once I start, I don't want to go through the trouble of moving it to another format. Since my PS2 doesn't read CDs (it only reads DVDs), my only options to play this game are to use the emulator, or to wait for my 60GB PS3 to get fixed.

[rama]

Just use the GameIndex file and keep the option to automatically apply patches enabled in PCSX2 (it's default on).
This will try to fix the spell animations and any other FMV scenes. It won't change the saving problem.