I don't get it. I read through the whole thread since i guess there are a lot of people who didn't read through instructions.
I did the region setup thingy - usse unicode utf-8 , i even use japeanese for non-unicode prgrams.
I have installed a locale emulator. In version 2.5.0.1.
I used winrar, opened, ctrl+e to change language to japanese on the ziped file and the update, i open the game by using the japanese language locale emulator and used the gameupdate.bat. I tryed different combinations of the steps above and the only thing that got fixed is that the text ingame is now readable, but no pictures load.