Scarlet Blade (Queen's Blade)

What works

• Installation, including the downloader.
• Updating from the launcher.
• After installing ie8 through winetricks; logging in and launching the game from the launcher. Note that ie8 can't be installed unless your prefix is created with WINEARCH=win32.
• After installing d3dx9_36 through winetricks; playing the game. I do not have reason to believe I encountered further problems related to Wine.

What does not

• The downloader seems to (temporarily) eat up extra disk space, causing out-of-space failures. Resuming the download afterwards works fine.
• When installing manually (using the files downloaded by the downloader), some shell (I didn't spend time trying to identify it) is dropped as installation should begin. Type exit to exit the shell and continue the installation. The terminal is left in some strange mode, which can later be reverted with the reset command.
• Logging in without installing third-party software or without WINEARCH=win32. This also affects seeing the content embedded in the launcher.
• Some text in the launcher looks wonky (in particular the password entry box). This seems to be merely cosmetic, and is fixed by installing allfonts from winetricks. I didn't bother trying to find out what particular font was needed.
• The game would not launch (after login) on my Intel HD Graphics 3000 (Sandy Bridge) laptop, popping up a message box about Illegal Instruction and showing a stack trace. This problem isn't present on my Nvidia Geforce 8800 box. This could be a game limitation unrelated to Wine.
• Models don't show up in-game (first observed on the class selection screen) unless d3dx9_36 is installed with winetricks.
• Switching to a different VT (with the game in fullscreen mode) and back causes various graphical glitches. Restarting the game seems necessary to recover.
• Anti-aliasing. The switch does nothing, even with a game restart.
• In game, significant slowdowns happen when entering a highly populated area or turning sharply after entering a new area.

Workarounds

What was not tested

• Anything without mono installed by the Wine ebuild.
• Gameplay after level 15 or apart from core activities like travelling, defeating enemies, completing quests, obtaining/using/modifying/selling items, rudimentary chat and grouping.

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU:
• Driver:

Additional Comments

If, for whatever reason, you decide to try running in a win64 prefix, you can avoid downloading the game files again after you give up and create a win32 prefix. Install (in the new win32 prefix) the files aeria_ignite_install.exe and scarletblade_us_installer_20130306.exe found in drive_c/AeriaGames/Downloader (from the old win64 prefix).