I installed SS2 on my laptop via the GoG downloader / installer (set to english, of course) and before i applied the universal patch i got the d3ds9 or whatever error -- then used the universal patcher and it launched. That's great! However the game is in German somehow? Whoops! Any ideas?

I must have managed to flub up redownloading it gave me the English Version sorry for the waste here folks! 8^)

It's a random site bug that occurs occasionally. I've seen it a few times with browser. Changing the language and switching back to English invariably fixes it for the current session.