They also suggested disabling the DSR settings on my newer Geforce card. Unfortunately, I do not see anything relating to DSR on the control panel, but maybe this will help some of you:

In late January, NVIDIA introduced in tis drivers the Supersampling option. It essentially renders the game in up to quadruple resolution, and scales it back down to your actual resolution. This is a specific anti-aliasing method, rarely implemented in games (Witcher 2 was an exception, and called it "Ubersampling").
It is enabled by default on GTX 980 cards, and optional on others.
It has been known to cause launch issues with older games, as it forces them to use an unsupported resolution.

To disable this option, right-click your desktop and select "NVIDIA Control Panel". Go to "3D Settings" and find the "DSR - Factors" option. Un-select all possible settings and confirm. This should change the setting to "Off". Apply the changes and check if this resolved the issue.

Hi guys,

Just figured I'd post here - found this on the STEAM forum. The game worked perfectly for me after I installed the K-Lite Codec pack. Do a Google search for it. I thought I'd pass it on in case anyone has the same problems. I have no idea what it did, but Pathologic HD runs for me.

Good call. If memory serves, the codecs simply enable the playing of certain video files that otherwise aren't supported or something like that. If that's the case, it may be that instead of being configured to skip and proceed to the game, the game crashes upon not being able to initiate the intro cutscenes/splashscreens.

I may be wrong on that, though, it's only what I remember from briefly running into this issue with something else I was working with awhile back.

OK, this is frustrating. I rarely have trouble with GOG games, but this one just won't start. ( Crashes immediately after launching the program. )

Similar PC specs as OP. Tried renaming and uninstalling the Galaxy folder ( it's not like I had much use for it ), running the game in administrator mode, and installed the codec pack as suggested in this thread.

So far the result is that I've wasted some time and bandwidth, but the game still won't work. :(

Oh yeah, and it's not like the game will tell you why it won't work -- missing files or anything like that -- so I have no idea what to do, other than trying random things and hoping for the best.

Update: In case anyone cares, I installed an up to date copy of Galaxy and managed to launch the game through that.

Fully optional? ... Riiight.

https://www.gog.com/forum/the_legend_of_heroes_trails_in_the_sky_series/is_it_possible_to_start_the_sc_without_gog_galaxy/post10

... Are you trying to say anything in particular, by posting that link?

Seems to explain the behavior you saw and I saw no reason to type it over again? An uninstall of Galaxy is a god damn joke with all the crap it leaves behind? GOG supplied galaxy.dll is also in a shit Beta phase? You wouldn't have had a problem if you never had Galaxy to begin with? Etc...

Just not a fan of people posting random links instead of proper replies, especially if they come without any kind of explanation, since it often leaves you guessing what they're trying to say. ( Or worse yet, random youtube links. )

But never mind, I agree about Galaxy being a mess. Which is why I download all my games via the browser, and launch them directly via their executables. Hence my irritation when the only viable solution to get a new game to work properly, was to download and install a new version of their client. I also played some other new games recently, such as Soma, and none of them had this problem, so it seems likely this dependence on Galaxy for certain games is only a mistake and not intended. Doesn't make it any less annoying, though.

Meh, it's a GOG forum link. Also, forgot to include make a Galaxy uninstall utility to my previous post.