@Recipient4626 hotfix shouldn't be used for random games. When it's needed by a title, it'll usually be set as the default steam side or be mentioned in the issue tracker.
I did some initial testing with proton experimental and experimental bleeding edge.
I'm curious, if you wipe the prefix and then try with proton experimental by only installing dotnet, do you still have crashing issues?
You're correct, vcrun2019 manual installation isn't needed after all.
With proton experimental I tried twice, and crashed twice, unfortunately.
Here's the log:
steam-2782500.log
Judging from steam forums and protondb reports, there are people who crash this way and people who don't at all. I wonder why...
Unity3D game, .NET Framework isn't used.
proton experimentalx3 2025-11proton hotfixx1 2025-11
Compatibility Report
System Information
I confirm:
steam-2782500.log
Symptoms
When starting the game (after choosing between "Sword of Justice" and "Sword of Justice DX11"), the game briefly shows an blank error window and then shuts down.
This however can be fixed by installing dotnet48, vcrun2019 using protontricks + ProtonGE (which is needed for the installation; normal Proton gives errors and will fail).
I think Steam should handle dependencies automatically.
After dotnet48, vcrun2019 is installed, the game runs smoothly until end of character creation.
After that, every time there's a scene transition, i.e. entering pre-scripted cutscenes, entering dungeons / battlegrounds, entering different maps (including actually entering the game world after character creation process), there is a chance the game will close itself during the transition or loading screen with no error messages.
So far it only happens during transitions, and is very stable otherwise. Tested with Proton Experimental, 10.0, 9.0, Hotfix, (also ProtonGE and ProtonEM)
Additional Info:
I installed the standalone game client from the official website, and used umu-launcher to launch the game with all Proton versions mentioned above, and the same thing happens just like Steam version.
But if I launch the game with
wine-ge-8.26, there's not a single crash observed for > 10 hours long gameplay where I go through lots of scene transitions by playing short pvp matches.This is probably a big hint at what went wrong.
Reproduction
Any in-game choices / character customization choices doesn't seem to have an effect on this bug. It's all by chance.