Dissidia: Final Fantasy - ULUS10437

[ephemereality]

I have played this game a long time on JPCSP to and from, so I decided to play again and downloaded the latest rev. The problem is that sometimes when I start quick battle, after I press to load the map, it just freezes at a white screen. I have never had this issue before and otherwise the game runs great. It is frustrating to have it freeze like this randomly. Makes me less inclined to try story mode again too, since there is no way you can save if the game crashes/freezes.

Does anyone else have this issue and did they find a work-around?

EDIT
I think I managed to get around the freezes when loading maps by increasing xms size and whatnot to the double, but now I ran into an error where the Cosmos/Dissidia map kind of froze after I finished the map and it was showing the items gained and so on. It just stopped rotating, my character didn't show (it had also been flashing a lot during that time in some prior games but not freezing) and I couldn't click anything or move forward. All I saw was the background as a static image, but the music was still playing. I have not received any error messages for these freezes which perplexes me more.

EDIT2
I managed to get around the white screen freeze when loading certain maps (also, it's very consistent what maps and when that refuse to load, making me think that it has something to do with the rev/graphics) but instead I get these kinds of freezes:


I tried the latest rev released just recently today being 3403, and the issue persists. I am not sure there's any point for me to provide with a log since I run a homebrew version of the US version of the game. I might try to get ahold of a normal US version and see if the same issue persists. Then it has to be with the rev and not the game, though I've played this homebrew version of the game before on previous revs just fine, so I don't know what the issue is, to be honest. It feels like I've tried almost every setting as well, and none really has any effect.

The best graphics settings still seem to be:
Enable GE Graphics
Shaders
Enable Saving GE Texture to Screen
Disabled optimized VertexInfo

EDIT3
To confirm, I tried Lunar Subterrane map again but not on Story Mode and same result. I will see if this persists with other maps too.

EDIT4
So I tried a much older rev and now it seems to load properly.