Fixing Kingdom Hearts 2's Hostile Program battle bug (assuming you're emulating on PS3)

I've been playing the original Kingdom Hearts 2 PAL release through emulation on my phat PS3 and ran into a playthrough killing bug, so this one is for the people who have also run into this error so they don't have to hunt through random Reddit threads for the answer like I did (thanks for this fix, Gwyder).

This is the Hostile Program in Space Paranoids. The issue you may be encountering is you beat the Hostile Program down to a certain amount of health...

...and nothing else happens. Mate just takes all the damage without issue and you can't progress.

What's happening is that Hostile Program is trying, and failing, to move into its next phase--if you play the 2.5 ReMIX, you'll still experience a minor hiccup in this fight while the game makes the phase change, but unfortunately, the emulator can't do it as well as modern consoles can. (And also, the remaster do be remastering.) Unfortunately, attempting to kill Hostile Program quickly doesn't solve this problem either; it will always get stuck here, no matter what. Trust me, I tried.

How to fix

Long story short, you need a CONFIG file.

Go to this website. Your computer may be annoyed because it's not secure, but it'll have to deal.

For Kingdom Hearts 2, you want to search Kingdom Hearts ii

Holding the middle button with the game booted will take you to the stock standard PS3 menu with options for your PS2 game. Find the corresponding Title ID of the version you're running. I'm running a PAL version, and it's SLES_541.14. Yours may be different. Please check it.

Rename the file. It needs to have the exact same name as your game, but with .CONFIG at the end. if your game is named Kingdom_Hearts_2.ISO the config file will need to be Kingdom_Hearts_2.ISO.CONFIG.

Upload it to your PS3. Stick it into the same location your ISO is.

Game is fixed. You're welcome. And enjoy KH2.