My PSP save game is corrupted, can't progress!

[frazzledCustomer]

I am stuck! And I am mad! I am about level 18 on my wizard and doing the quest story. At some point after one particular battle (I think it was against one of the ogre mages if it matters) the game failed to save. If I choose to let it fail and continue playing, I can. But I now cannot progress beyond this point. Every time I start up the game and try to load, no matter how far I got the time before, it loads me back at the place where the game failed to save originally.

I also noticed that although I created my character with the name "Alex" (my first name), his name in the Single Player character select screen now appears as "Alex/" (with a '/' character appended on the end). Something is not right and I suspect the save file was corrupted somehow by a bug in the game. I never messed with any of my saved data files. Is there any way I can somehow restore the integrity of my save file? Or maybe move it to a different memory stick slot or something? I really don't want to start over again. How can I get a full refund for this game? I've only had it about a week. It was the first game I bought for my new PSP and now it's leaving a bad taste in my mouth and giving me a bad case of buyers remorse.

[KGB]

FrazzledCustomer,

There is a chance that this can be fixed.

I suspect the corruption created a 2nd copy of your hero. But this 2nd copy can't ever progress in the story line.

When you start the game, instead of hitting 'continue quest', go into the 'single player' mode menu. This is the menu where you can chose to battle single opponents.

In that menu you'll see your hero portrait. You can view the hero there. If you have more than 1 hero, there will be arrows next to his portrait to scroll forward/backward between the various heroes you have.

If I am guessing correctly, there will be 2 copies of your hero there. Scroll to that 1st (other) copy and then continue the quest with that copy of the hero.

Hopefully this is the case and that you'll be able to continue.

KGB

[frazzledCustomer]

Nope, only one hero appears. As mentioned, I originally just named him "Alex" when I created him but now his name appears in the single player character selection menu as "Alex/". The name did not appear like this at first until some time after the save game corruption started happening. I usually do start up my game like this by going through the single player screen as you mentioned because my wife and I share this one PSP and one copy of the game each of us having our own characters. I have now hooked up the PSP to the USB cable on my computer and I looked into the saved games directory and there is only one folder "ULUS10225Alex" there with 3 files in it. As stated, this game can be loaded ok (always from the same point in the quest) but i cannot then save any more progress. I have 3 (very low levels just starting) of my own other characters and one character for my wife as well and they don't have any problem so far. My wifes character is a wizard now level 23 and the main difference for her is that she has not captured any enemies or researched any spells or bought stuff in the store or upgraded her citatdel or anything like that. (She just likes the straight up puzzle aspect of the game and doesn't care too much for all the other RPG stuff. . .girls. . .meh whatcha gonna do?) I, on the other hand, had bought at least one item from the store in the "Single Player" screen, captured a few enemies, bought all buildings for my citadel, and researched at least one spell (Zap I think) from a captured enemy Imp. I also had captured 2 mounts and trained one of them up one level I think. My wife never did this. For what it's worth I have experienced one game freeze up where the PSP just froze for a bit then shut itself down and restarted while playing puzzle quest. Unfortunately I don't remember exactly what was going on at the time that happened but it did happen shortly before my save game became corrupted.

[KGB]

FrazzledCustomer,

Too bad there isn't a duplicate save. I was hoping that might be the case.

For what it's worth, upgrading your citadel, buying items and training mounts does not cause any issues for people. Nor does forging items (if your collecting Runes). Almost all reported issues come from people capturing a lot of monsters/learning a lot of spells. Those are the two things to avoid on the PSP. There does not seem to be an exact cut off number that I can give you. So you can capture/learn a few but at some point it will cause a problem.

Now for your save. One more thing to try. Hook up the PSP to your computer and then load your character in the game. Then from the computer, copy the hero folder to your computer and remove it on the PSP. Then go buy some trivial item in the store or enter/exit your citadel so that it forces the game to do a save. Then check and see if the hero was saved or not. I hope the hero will be saved fresh and it might let you continue.

If not, it could be that the '/' in your character name is causing a problem because it could be affecting file paths (by putting in an extra /'). If this is the case, it *might* be possible to use a hex editor and remove the '/' from your name and put the file back on the PSP. It would all depend on if there is any CRC checksum in the hero file (typically I2 doesn't have one). I can do the hex edit for you if it's not something your comfortable doing.

KGB

[Kynn]

Just a note. I was curious about accessing my other character today, so I went to the single player screen (on the PSP version), and there were no arrows anywhere on that page. By accident, I hit the left shoulder button, and sure enough, it swapped characters. So, I guess I just wanted to mention that not having the arrows doesn't *necessarily* mean there isn't another character there. Not so much for the OP, but for anyone else. :)