Newbie having issues with White Album 2 PC

[fiery_stars]

So I had a random spark of inspiration and decided to finally play through the patch-in-progress of White Album 2, so I went and bought it digitally via DMM.18 in the hope that I could get an idea what the game is about (and also why the TL is supposedly bad) as I adore it's soundtrack. I also went and got the patch.

I managed to get the game installed and working after some trial and error. I managed to get it to start up, and I press New Game on the title screen and it goes black and after a few seconds crashes and stops responding. There is also no music or sound effects depsite the volume sliders been set, I think there is supposed to be music playing on the title screen. The volume slider dosen't show up in my Mixer, so I'm a bit baffled.

My computer is set to Japanese locale and this occurs whether the patch is applied or not, so it's not that. I'm using Windows 8.1.

Anybody have any idea if there's anything I could have missed? I'd appreicate some feedback, thanks.