Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 Portable

[FakeUser]

Final Edit: Solved, see last paragraph for what fixed it for me if whoever is reading this has the same problem I describe below. Moral of the story: use fast-forward button responsibly; I especially advise against using it just as the game starts to load.

I've got a bit of a bizarre problem. I've been playing this game on version 1.4 of ppsspp (I thought this was the latest version, as I had an option in the program checked that says "Check for new versions of PPSSPP" but apparently doesn't work?) with default emulation settings and have had no problems (including using the program's fast-forward button [R2 by default for me] very heavily) except for one time a few weeks ago when making a save state crashed the program... until today. I was doing a bit of heavy persona doctoring (using skill cards and stat ups, registering, fusing, etc.) and making save states and hard saves regularly as I went. At some point I had just made a saved state, then I summoned Alice, used 2 skill cards on her, and talked to Elizabeth. After selecting the second dialogue option in her first dialogue box, the program hung and closed itself with an error box as I pressed fast-forward. So I opened ppsspp again, opened the game, loaded my latest save state, repeated the same steps, and had the exact same result. I tested this 3+ times. I then decided to try restarting my computer. I re-tested, and again got the same result. Then, I decided to try and turn off the "Fast Memory" option (which, might I remind, have been using the entire game for months of off and on play with no issue). I repeated the same steps again and this time it did not hang and worked properly.

After that though I'm getting a new problem every now and then. As something starts to load or change screens (especially if I fast-forward on and off), the game will freeze (usually on a black screen transition), but ppsspp continues functioning normally (I can even load a save state and it doesn't complain, though trying to get the game to respond is fruitless). So, I tried turning back on Fast Memory. Now I'm suddenly having ppsspp hang right and left (especially when the game has to think about something, like if an enemy in combat gets a turn). Thus I'm forced to turn off Fast Memory again, but still get the occasional game freeze that I can easily recover from if I make frequent save states.

What's going on? Nothing has changed on my computer or the game settings or the ppsspp settings whatsoever. Nothing has updated to my knowledge. I've played through almost to the end of the game and never had this happen. I seem to be able to work around it, but I'd like to know if there's anything I can do to fix this, especially as I'm worried it might somehow get worse. Things that might be worth noting: all of this happened inside Tartarus, and all these issues have been occurring on the same in-game day. I have not tested exiting Tartarus to see if that might flush some bad memory or something, and I have not tested saving with a hard save, quitting in-game, and reloading the save to, again, try and flush some bad memory or something.

If anyone has any ideas on why this is happening or suggestions on how to deal with it better, please let me know!

Edit 1: I just tried resetting the ppsspp settings just in case I had somehow accidentally changed some settings. No effect on my issues. I just tried making a hard save in-game, returning to title screen from in-game menu, loading the file in-game, and made a new save state. Same results again in regards to my issues. I'm now officially baffled.

EDIT 2: big breakthrough, I seem to have fixed the problem, at least for now. I loaded an older save state, and it was working fine with Fast Memory enabled. From that save state, I saved in-game over my main file, loaded it in-game, then loaded the "bad" save state, saved over my main file in-game again, loaded it in-game, then saved over my "bad" save state. I may have gotten some of the ordering mixed up or the steps themselves mixed up, but suffice it to say the file itself was bad (not the save state?), and by saving over it in-game with a "good" file wiped whatever problem it had away. I'll leave this post for others who might have my problem--just fiddle around with your saves and hopefully fix itself.