Game Drag-on-Dragoon/Drakengard lags when/after accessing memory card (Parallel-GS)

The game Drag-on-Dragoon (Japan) / Drakengard (USA) (Tested both versions) slows down to a crawl as soon as it tries to access a memory card and there are existing saves in it. The game then never recovers even after it's done with the memory card operations, making it unplayable.
This happens in the ParaLLEL-GS renderer. Tested Vulkan, Software, and OpenGL and none have this issue.

For example, when starting the game with an existing save in the MC, the game tries to load it as soon as it starts, and triggers the slowdown immediately.
When starting the game without any saves in the MC, the game doesn't load anything and proceeds into the main menu as normal, but as soon as one tries to create a save (for example, going into the options screen and saving), it triggers the slowdown.

Thanks for reading!

Reproduce the slowdown in Drag-on-Dragoon/Drakengard with an existing memory-card save, then compare behavior across the ParaLLEL-GS, Vulkan, Software, and OpenGL renderers. Trace the ParaLLEL-GS path used during memory-card loading and saving; done means memory-card operations no longer leave the game running at an unusable crawl.