Regarding the state that the Steam version often gets into after a fight, where the screen just has a blank “blue swirl effect” and appears locked up, I recently found that if you click just above the center of the screen, it pops up the “Fight better with boosts” info box for Team-up damage. And after showing that popup, you can actually exit the frozen state back to the game.
Thus, the game isn’t actually frozen, it’s just in a weird display state. Hopefully the above is a clue that will help identify what state that’s in. (And in the meantime, at least I found a way to continue without reloading).
Note that after a fight, I typically mash the space bar quickly to dismiss the popups, which might also have something to do with getting into that state.
Looks like what happens here, is that the game wanted to put up a “boost found” popup, but for whatever reason, it doesn’t draw, and shows only the blue background. That’s why the click pops up info about that boost.
I also noticed that I often mix mouse clicks and space bar presses when dismissing the post-fight popups, Typically, the mouse clicks are for the character dialog arrows, but when I get in the habit of clicking on those, sometimes I click a button if there are no character dialogs. So there might be something with two simultaneous attempts to dismiss popups, one click and one space bar.
I stopped getting the bsod issue for a couple of weeks there - no idea why - but it’s been back for a couple of days, and your suggestions really helped. Thanks!