The game itself plays perfectly, but the loading times are utterly unacceptably long.
After I got the fez and could change perspective it takes ages to change locations. If I try to enter a small house it takes about a minute. Going out takes 4-5 minutes (timed it several times with a stopwatch).
I've yet to play long enough to leave the starter-"island", due to the time staring at a small cube spinning.

I know this is a port from XBOX and that minor bugs or bad optimizations can happen (at least until patched), but this is just too ridiculous...

By the way, I fulfill all system requirements. Just barely, but at least I'm not below. And both my video and audio drivers have been recently updated.

I'm sorry, I can't offer a solution beyond saying that this behaviour is definitely NOT NORMAL. My rig may be a bit more powerful, but it's definitely not new and I can barely see a loading screen.

You may be able to pinpoint the problem by looking at the process with Microsoft's ProcessMonitor and ProcessExplorer, but then again, the question is whether it will help you solve the problem.

Generally, this sounds like an access (are you running the game from a network share?) or audio problem (you said you updated the drivers, but just because its the newest doesn't guarantee bug-freeness).

Other people have reported problems with Intel graphics... it doesn't sound like a video problem, but one never knows... do you have one of those?

On my windows xp machine it is nearly the same. the initial loading takes up to 4-5 minutes, but after that everything is fine. That is also a rather weak machine(i posted it before but here we go: intel atom dual core @ 1,7GHz and nvidia ion, 2gib ram).

So if you are running this game on equal hardware(you wrote your system barely meets the requirements) you should only have that long initial loading but after that all should be ok(except the known bugs which will get fixed today...i hope).

What hardware are you using? what did you already tried? Are other games working fine?

OS: Windows 7 Home Premium SP1
Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 2.80GHz
Memory: 2GB RAM
Graphics: GeForce gt 240 (1GB VRAM)
Audio: SoundBlaster Audigy

As you can see I pass the minimum requirements, though only by a hairs width.
What baffles me is that the game itself runs supersmooth. It's only the loading that's been a problem. I tried FEZ on an XBOX once, and the performace is just about equal.

Edit: Running it at 1280 * 1024

Perhaps if your motherboard has integrated audio, you could temporarily enable it - while disabling your Audigy - and see if that makes any difference.

Grasping at straws, but it's all I can think of for the moment.

Restart the game itself (not your save) That fixed it for me.

although on a lighter hearted note: I Still remember loading games off tape that could take 30 mins to load 1 level :P and if you died you would have to reload that data xD

Never mind. The 1.03 patch fixed the problem. ^_^

Just did, on your reply. But for some reason I can't mark "solved" on my own replies. :-/

Yeah, I had a feeling that would be a case. Thanks for the marking.