Xenoblade freezes trying to load New Game+ ?

Well I finished the game and afterward it prompts you to create a new file to use as the starting point for New Game Plus. I did so, but every time I try to load it up the game seems to freeze. The emulator doesn't freeze...I can still make/load savestates and otherwise interact with it normally, but the game refuses to load New Game+. The Monado animation that plays during the load screen just stops and nothing else happens. I can load my other saves normally, and if I try to load my NG+ save while in-game on one of these other files, again the game just freezes and the music loops as if the emulator froze (but it didn't). This is with version 3.5.

Very strange. I tried using version 3.0-72 (The HLE fix) and this popped up while trying to load NG+:

ERROR: Trying to compile at 0, LR=80097 cd8

And then the emulator crashed.

What's going on?