Really hope to get some help here.
I had this installed on an secondary harddrive where it was working fine (I've been playing HS for years) and I had to do a fresh install of Windows a few days back.
Now the game still launches fine (I use initsetting) but the game won't load any plugins/mods whatsoever. I know this not only because everything is in Japanese now but because in the settings the option to look through all the plugin settings is gone.
I tracked this problem to persist through all Unity/Bepinex games like Koikatsu and Playhome, they all launch and play fine but no plugins load. It's like I am playing the base vanilla japanese game even though i have hundreds of plugins.
Regardless I downloaded HS2 DX R12 fresh from STN website and did not transfer any files from my old folder but the issue still persists. Since the game works perfectly fine other than not a single mod or plugin loading I have to believe this is something related to Bepinex but I have no idea what, I have tried many different things for hours. And yes I fully updated Windows as well
I am hoping someone here is tech savvy or has some deeper knowledge about how the plugins are loaded. let me know if i should upload any screenshots
Well - I have no experience playing from an external drive, the only thing I can recommend is to avoid registry fixer and run the game standalone.
But if I remember right Velcrofly did so - ask him for help.
I run all my Illusion games from an external SD card. I haven't experienced the same problem but I did on one occasion experience something that may be similar.
My laptop has a built-in card reader and when I firsy bought the card & tried running HS2 iwith the card in the laptop's card reader it would only run in Japanese. I couldn't change it. I didn't get as far as knowing whether I had teh same plug-in issue as well.
I then switched the card to be accessed from an external card reader and everytghing worked fine and in English. The drive letter changed. When I tried going back to that SD card through the laptop's reader it woudl have the same problem. Yet it all worked perfectly via the external reader.
Later I got another SD card - same make and specification. That works perfectly on the laptop's reader.
I can't understand why one works fine one way and another (same make and spec) doesn't.
Hopefullyy sharing all this will make some sense t someone and will help solve your problem.
The only idea I have from my experience is to try using the same drive with maybe a different USB port of similar way of triggering the PC to assign a different drive letter. It's a long shot and I don't immediately see why it would work logically but it would replicate how mine worked.
Hope this helps in some way