Hacking I made an out-of-region wiiware game work on neek2o, but now I need help with saves

[chonky]

This post is tl;dr, you can skip to the 2nd post.

I'm in need of some help, I've been trying to figure out wiiware games and thanks to various tutorials on this site I've gotten pretty far. I had managed to make Castlevania Rebirth work through USBLoader-GX a long time ago, but every other game I had tried gave me a blackscreen. I forgot how I did it so I decided to start fresh and really learn how it all works.
Now, I'm trying to run FFIV The After Years, in japanese. I tried various methods to make it run, from dumping my nand on GX and installing it there and running it directly, tried neek2o, even installed on real NAND via yawmm. All methods gave me either blackscreen, or the game would start but then freeze after the initial instruction screens. Sometimes I'd get the "this channel can't be used" message you get from running an out-of-region channel.
In the end the only way that worked was, dumping my nand, booting into that nand through neek2o, then use the button 2 menu on the main screen to turn on the region free hack and the "temp region change" hack (It has to be both of them). Then it would finally get past the white screen. After that I can run the game directly from GX with the boot option set to neek and it works all the same.
But now, the game still won't start, because it thinks my internal memory is full, and sends me to the save data manager screen (So close yet so far!). Neek2o freezes when I try to view the saves on internal memory, by the way.
During this whole ordeal I also tried creating a fresh emuNAND using modmii instead of using a dump of my real nand, which is what I've seen being recommended to use with neek2o. Maybe then saves would work. First I tried a japanese emunand, but I couldn't get past the initialization screen (I sync the controller, but pressing A simply does nothing). Now that I made the game work on my dumped USA nand, I figured I could try a fresh USA nand, so I did that, and got past the initialization process and booted into the main screen, and made sure to set the corresponding region hacks. Then I went back to GX, installed the FFIV wad on the fresh USA emunand, and attempted to boot into it again, except now it won't work. Trying to run the game installed on that emunand via GX gives me a black screen, and trying to boot into that emunand through any means (GX, wiiflow, nswitch) instead reboots the console into plain ol' real nand. So, the fresh USA emunand got corrupted, as soon as I installed a wad on it. The Japanese one I made previously got corrupted the same way.

That's as far as I got, so any help regarding making saves work on neek2o, either on a dump of my real nand or on a fresh emunand made via modmii (or how to make a fresh emunand work at all), or any other way would be greatly appreciated!

 

[chonky]

tl;dr of the previous post: I'm trying to play FFIV After Years on USBLoaderGX but I'm running into one roadblock after another, help needed.

I've tried some more things.
I've deleted all my emunands and started fresh. I currently have:
- a dump of my real nand, made with UGX (/nands/01)
- a clean nand created via modmii (/nands/pl_us)
I also created the neek2o files again, this time choosing UNEEK (as opposed to UNEEK+DI)
Both emunands are USA region and have the neek regional patches turned on (on the button 2 menu), and no other settings changed.

I've tested with two wiiware titles, Castlevania Rebirth, and FFIV After Years, both JPN. They are installed on both emunands. I run everything using neek mode via UGX.

Castlevania works on both emunands. They also create system data and save properly, so I've discarded the idea that neek2o has trouble with saving. But there's a difference: On the dumped nand, pressing the home button works as intended, but on the clean nand it makes the game show an error message, saying it had trouble with the system memory, and to check the manual, and it freezes there.

FFIV works on the dumped emunand, but it thinks my internal storage is full, and won't let me through until I free up space (which is impossible). I should mention again that this particular method is the only one that has even gotten me this far (nand dumped from real nand, using neek mode, both of neek's region patches). On the clean nand the game doesn't start, it shows a blackscreen.

So, clearly I'm still doing something wrong with the clean nand, since it's behaving differently from the dumped nand on both games I've tried, but I'm pretty much betting on it getting past the internal storage error if I get it to work.

What I did for the clean nand is:
- ran modmii
- said no to everything it offers to install
- wrote down my serial number properly
- copied to the nands folder
- booted into it via neek2o via UGX features menu
- did the initial configuration and got to the home screen
- went back to real nand, UGX, then installed the wads

I also tried copying cert.sys from the dumped nand to the clean nand, but it did nothing (there was also space.sys, should I copy that one too?)
Various sources also say that booting the emunand through neek2o will take a while the first time, sometimes a full minute, because it's creating some necessary files, but for me the first time doesn't take any longer than subsequent times.
I don't know what else to try, so again, any help or ideas or anything is greatly appreciated.