Eternal Sonata Freezing and Crashing

[idklol23]

Quick summary

This game will randomly freeze. I have played 3 different save files and it will freeze at unexpected times. Sometimes when pressing the triangle button to see the menu, it won't pop up. Also when exiting the menu there will be a black shape that takes up the screen for just almost a millisecond. From my current save file, my game guarantees to freeze in the closing battle cutscene. It also started crashing recently too and shutting the entire application off.

1. Please attach RPCS3's log.

3. Please attach screenshots of your problem.

https://imgur.com/a/qsnKnVm

4. Please provide comparison with real PS3.

Should not be freezing. Also should not have black shape when exiting menu.

5. Please provide your system configuration:

• Windows 10

• Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-5820K CPU @ 3.30GHz

• Nvidia GeForce GTX 980
  RPCS3.log

• Driver Version 30.0.15.1179

[Chelsea04112018]

Constantly crashes for me too when finishing a battle... I don't know how to fix it but it's becoming unplayable.

[Nyantcha]

Change PPU decoder to "static" in the CPU tab, it makes the game slow but stable enough to play

[plato79]

After changing PPU decoder to static I didn't see any hangs after the battles.. Though, inventory screen and especially save screen didn't pop up..

[Naia-love]

Can confirm, very annoying. I'll try to mess around some more with the option

[Naia-love]

So the whole menu disappearing happened to me with LLVM as PPU too (and I barely can play with static anyway, it's barely 10fps).
But it appears that changing spu decoder to ASMJIT seems to do the trick? Only tried short sessions tho (well the menu could disappear after even barely 5m in some cases). A friend is screensharing to me their game with static as PPU decoder and asmjit for the spu and seems to be good for her now too.
edit: just got a crash with static ppu and asmjit spu (well freeze on a blackscreen loading)

[Naia-love]

Here logs from my last session with LLVM PPU decoder and ASMJIT for SPU decoder:
RPCS3.log
it randomly froze after a fight.
So yeah from all the test, even static PPU seems to be pretty unstable, and asmjit spu seems to reduce how often the menu break (it still can happen unfortunately. and idk maybe just coincidence )

[Nyantcha]

The game doesn't open at all anymore

[AndehX]

Game currently is unplayable due to "Unmapped memory" crashes.

[plato79]

The game doesn't open at all anymore

The game opens and you can play but it freezes randomly after battles. Because there's no auto save system that could rescue your progress, we could clearly state that it's not playable yet.

[Nyantcha]

The game doesn't open at all anymore

The game opens and you can play but it freezes randomly after battles. Because there's no auto save system that could rescue your progress, we could clearly state that it's not playable yet.

When I made this reply the game would start up with a white screen, fade to black, and then nothing happens anymore. I tried with various settings, even using default settings but couldn’t get it to play.

I had this same issue with Disgaea 3

I can’t tell now because I haven’t tested it yet but this happened after I updated RPCS3, so i wonder if this has anything to do with a corrupted update

[plato79]

I played for about 15 minutes on 14985 without any problem. Yet this doesn't mean there're no problems. As we know, it crashes randomly after some battles.

[Nyantcha]

I played for about 15 minutes on 14985 without any problem. Yet this doesn't mean there're no problems. As we know, it crashes randomly after some battles.

The issue persists on my end with 14985.

[catamay]

After changing PPU decoder to static I didn't see any hangs after the battles.. Though, inventory screen and especially save screen didn't pop up..

With Static PPU and SPU decoders (default settings for 0.0.28-15118 otherwise on R5 3600X + RTX 2070), the issues with crashing and menus don't seem to persist anymore. However, the game is essentially unplayable due to lag during battle, which is expected. Additionally, the audio is very slow.

Edit: I think I'm able to recreate the end of battle freezing by trying to skip through the usual animation by spamming the X button. I attached the subsequent log below if that's of any help.
RPCS3.log

Game currently is unplayable due to "Unmapped memory" crashes.

I'll need to play longer for random crashes to create a log to see this, but anecdotally, there are still random crashes on faster SPU settings where the game is more playable. I'll play with settings to see if I can get better results than what I have now.

[AndehX]

This game seems to actually be playable now. After updating to 0.0.28-1-5e6aa456 Alpha, I'm no longer getting any crashes at all. I played for about an hour yesterday and experienced no issues at all, except a weird graphical error at the bottom of the screen during cut scenes.

[AndehX]

after some more tinkering on my steam deck, I discovered the game is only stable when you have SMT enabled, and all 8 cores are fully utilized. disabling SMT makes the game unplayable, as it will crash almost immediately. Not sure if this information will help when improving RPCS3's stability and compatibility, but it is what is it.

[rtritto]

I'm using 0.0.28-15245-8e3d0af0 and I have no problems.

My settings:

• from souce:
  • GPU
    • Write Color Buffers = Enabled
  • Advanced
    • Maximum Numbers of SPURS Threads = 3
  • Debug
    • Force CPU blit emultation = Enabled
• additional (optional):
  • Audio
    • Enable Time Stretching = Enabled
  • Advanced
    • Suspend-Emulation Savestates Mode = Enabled

[RaienryuuNoNatsu]

I'm running it on version 0.0.28-15341-bff6e0d2 Alpha, OS is Windows 10 Pro 22H2. Intel i7 8700K, RTX 2070, and 16GBs of 3200MHz RAM. For the sake of space, temporarily runs on an HDD.

From the look of it, the settings from the previous post seem to be doing the trick. Heaven's Mirror Forest (the second Polka's section) has always been a breaking point for me, so I'll check later if that's passable. I've, however, stumbled upon a curious series of consistent drop frames. I'm running this at 4K internally (as in, 720p recommended, and scaled by 300%), and dropping resolution to 2K made no difference whatsover. Sorry, there's gonna be a lot of samples.

So, from what I'm gathering, this game doesn't like lights shaft. Also, like in the village, or in the last screenshot (which is where the game begins), the drops are more severe. Seems like it also doesn't like save points. Specifically for the village, there's a small rainbow to the right, paired with the save point. The last screenshot sports a save point and lights shaft.

These are my settings specifically for the game. I first ran the game with stock settings (except for the upscaled resolution and Nearest + the aforementioned fixes). And then with these settings, I changed really few settings with no results.

I might be doing something wrong, or I need to enable/disable something. If anyone has any idea, I'm all ears. Thanks for the patience with this game, but it's finally coming along. :D

EDIT 1: I tried a few more things. First, I tried native resolution. That didn't fix it, I just gained 2fps over 4K. Then I tried OpenGL, which turned out to be 10fps worse than Vulkan (expected, but you know, could've been a bug). And last, I tried disabling Force CPU blit emultation. The result?

Which is sad, because it seems to be what saves this game. I'm gonna try to play a bit further ahead and see what happens.

EDIT 2: Got my crash in Heaven's Mirror Forest as expected after EDIT 1.
RPCS3.log

[plato79]

Well, I played about two weeks ago from the start until I met with Frederic(?) with no problem whatsoever. Menus, saves did work and there were no crashes after battles in the part where I played ( going through the forest with Polka, brothers Allegretto and Beat's walk through sewers and rat king fight, again Polka meeting with Frederic )

I ran with default settings in the original resolution.

I didn't have any performance problems though I'm playing on a PC like this:
AMD Ryzen 5900X, 128 GB RAM, RTX 4090

I cannot give version information because I'm away from my PC for two weeks.

[Nyantcha]

Can confirm what Plato said, the game runs stable now even with stock settings. However I am having quite a sound delay and I’m not sure how to fix that. Buffering and stretching is both on

what I mean is that when for example I control a character and make them walk and then stop I can still hear the footsteps 2 seconds after the character stopped walking

edit: might be because I’m running this on a lower end pc with a GTX 1660 super and AMD Ryzen 5 3400G. I experience some lag

[kazesh8451]

Can confirm what Plato said, the game runs stable now even with stock settings. However I am having quite a sound delay and I’m not sure how to fix that. Buffering and stretching is both on

what I mean is that when for example I control a character and make them walk and then stop I can still hear the footsteps 2 seconds after the character stopped walking

edit: might be because I’m running this on a lower end pc with a GTX 1660 super and AMD Ryzen 5 3400G. I experience some lag

Ran rpcs3 on steamdeck with all default settings, booted up my fort fermata save, and crashed after first battle trying to skip through exp screen. I've also tried some of Raien's settings. That too does not work and just made my game slower. Either platform and hardware difference, still not enough optimization, or both.
edit: a more recent crash w/ log.
RPCS3.log

[Nyantcha]

I managed to play until Ritardondo and then couldn’t go into the sewers because the game freezes when you attempt to load into the next area

[plato79]

If you're talking about the first time you control the brothers I passed that part without any problem. Anyway, it's pointless to write what we did or didn't actually. If anyone had a crash or freeze, please share your LOG file so people who could fix the problem could see what it really is.

[plato79]

Got back from my vacation and tried(!) to play a while. Unfortunately in Heaven's Mirror Forest after a battle it crashed again. Here is the log file.
ETERNAL SONATA [BLES00444].log.gz

[kazesh8451]

Ive been noticing some improvements since ive last played. Its not perfect, but its something. Recently ive been grinding out crash logs in different areas. Im currently on vacay, but when i get back ill edit this comment again with the zip. Dont know if it will be of any use, but please look forward to it. What im using to play; steamdeck, BLUS, stock settings.
edit: cannot pass through glissando cliffs so im uploading it now.
I included a Read Me. It is a very quick generalization of the whole folder. I also tried making it organized. Had screenshots of bugged graphics for agogo forest, but i forgot to add them. Oh well.
Steamdeck ES Crash Logs.zip

[Triticum0]

Was able to finish the demo without any crashes. Still not sure if it is playable?

[Writingnon]

Just tried playing it and game froze after the tutorial battle with the two kids. I thought it was because I tried to save at the nearby savepoint.

Game froze as well in the middle of the tutorial dialogue before that but I was upping the Vblank setting to 120 there.

Here's my log.
ETERNAL SONATA [BLES00444].log.gz

[Chacha552266]

I'm using 0.0.28-15245-8e3d0af0 and I have no problems.

My settings:

• from souce:

  • GPU

    • Write Color Buffers = Enabled

  • Advanced

    • Maximum Numbers of SPURS Threads = 3

  • Debug

    • Force CPU blit emultation = Enabled

• additional (optional):

  • Audio

    • Enable Time Stretching = Enabled

  • Advanced

    • Suspend-Emulation Savestates Mode = Enabled

Just to share by using this setting *Not included the additional one
I was able to complete the game twice (include encore mods bonus dungeon) without any freeze after battle or cutscenes.
The only issue is that by having Force CPU blit emulation and write color buffers on, it will cause the performance of the games drop.
Basically we can have constant 30 FPS through out all game (60 FPS in field), which is super smooth, but on some specific map area, the FPS may drop lower eg: Fort Fermata, Aria Temple. This two location will have lower FPS but still playable. (Both area will be very suffer especially fort fermata as the map is big, aria temple just have to go through a lot of battle)
But the game may still randomly having graphic broke and cause Menu and save point unable to use (i only go through this 3 times in game, which is in heaven mirror forest, elegy of the moon and Ezi church, but this only happen after i have the game opening for too long time).
*Hopes this may help for those who concerned.

[kazesh8451]

I'm using 0.0.28-15245-8e3d0af0 and I have no problems.
My settings:

• from souce:

  • GPU

    • Write Color Buffers = Enabled

  • Advanced

    • Maximum Numbers of SPURS Threads = 3

  • Debug

    • Force CPU blit emultation = Enabled

• additional (optional):

  • Audio

    • Enable Time Stretching = Enabled

  • Advanced

    • Suspend-Emulation Savestates Mode = Enabled

Just to share by using this setting *Not included the additional one I was able to complete the game twice (include encore mods bonus dungeon) without any freeze after battle or cutscenes. The only issue is that by having Force CPU blit emulation and write color buffers on, it will cause the performance of the games drop. Basically we can have constant 30 FPS through out all game (60 FPS in field), which is super smooth, but on some specific map area, the FPS may drop lower eg: Fort Fermata, Aria Temple. This two location will have lower FPS but still playable. (Both area will be very suffer especially fort fermata as the map is big, aria temple just have to go through a lot of battle) But the game may still randomly having graphic broke and cause Menu and save point unable to use (i only go through this 3 times in game, which is in heaven mirror forest, elegy of the moon and Ezi church, but this only happen after i have the game opening for too long time). *Hopes this may help for those who concerned.

The fact that you are saying all this with 2 completions must mean that it holds true. I’m currently trying this WITH v0.0.28. Had to do another rpcs3 install dedicated to it. Never used that version cause I thought there was no need. My only gripe are the frames you described. I value my experience and that will probably annoy me to the ends of earth. Graphical glitches shouldn’t bother me much if I can go through the area fine. My hope for the future is that they start working on fixing this game again for newer versions of rpcs3 or just in general. If I don’t comment again, it will mean it worked for me too. My prediction guess: if I crash it could be because of my hardware or operating system. Stay safe and have fun everyone. SD4LYFE

[plato79]

While it's good to have someone finished the complete game without any freeze, if I play a long time and cannot save after traversing a whole area I'd not be too happy to play through again ( which happened to me also in Heaven Mirror Forest ).

Also the hardware you played this with is also important. With which CPU&GPU you got 30/60 fps?

[Havard-SL]

Hi! I have a couple of things I wanted to add to the conversation around this game on RPCS3.

Firstly, I have a hard time replicating the crashes and graphical glitches on my gaming computer (CPU: 7600X, GPU: RX 6750XT, OS: Fedora 40), but I have crashed on my steam deck (LCD variant) twice as well as had the menu dissapear and some minor graphical glitches during cutscenes. So this game might be very hardware dependant.

Second, I have noticed that both on my computer as well as my steam deck, I get a pretty significant boost to FPS on my gaming computer as well as steam deck if i turn Anti Aliasing to off in the settings. I have tried comparing side by side screenshots of the game with it set to Auto as well as off, and I can't see any difference in the picture quality (even when rendering in 1080p). Could any of you confirm this? In addition I have also noticed that setting Shader quality to low also helps with the fps a little bit both on my computer as well as the steam deck.