Sadly, fiddling with regional settings and System Locale didn't do it for me. The game's still crashing at start. I wasn't using any Japanese language anyway. In my case the system was basically in canadian english (with a french canadian keyboard), with some UK english at some places for some unknown reason. I set it all to US english, but no change.

Still, you are definitely on to something. If changing the system locale fix the issue for some of you, it means that the game is likely not handling something correctly, causing the crash. The language is probably not the actual root cause, or not the only one.

Meanwhile, I opened a ticket with GOG support to send them a dxdiag file, and tried a few basic things suggested by them (update display drivers, install/repair C++ runtimes, running in administrative mode and win 7 compatibility), but so far nothing worked. Now that TwitchinSal can boot the game, I guess I'll have to be the one who keep the line open with GOG support.

I'll update this thread it there's anything new on my side.

I finally managed to start the game. What did it was unchecking the box "Beta : Use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support" in the dialog box to change the system locale.

Is that a Galaxy thing?

If you mean the unicode checkbox I was writing about, no it's not a Galaxy thing, it's a Windows setting in the dialog box for changing the system locale.

I've no idea why this box was checked on my system. I never use beta features unless absolutely necessary, and I certainly never needed this specific one before.

Ah.

Looking at mine, there isn't an option for Beta anything. :<

So I guess I'm still stuck...

By way of a quick coda I did close my support ticket with GOG once I found a solution to the issue on my end, but I did update the support person before doing so and suggested they keep an eye on this thread; hopefully anyone still having trouble will be able to continue to get help going forward.

As for IFI, I never did hear from them since filing my PC support ticket several weeks ago; at one point I instead wrote to their "general" support contact to see if anyone could check on the situation, and I did eventually hear back from someone there, though it's kind of a moot point by now. I've also sent that person the link to this thread, hopefully it will help in some fashion...

My system is in Japanese since I read and play a lot of eroges games (* cuf, * cuf). I will try to change the language of my system and try when I have the opportunity