I discovered the problem. Something on my system broke Special K as a whole as whenever I attempted to reinstall a fix I'd get a d3d9.dll error.

I redownloaded Special K, installed the fixes again and now they are working. I guess I was just a victim of Window's breaking things randomly again without me touching it.

Problem solved.

Now this I don't understand. They were working perfectly fine some weeks ago when I was still actively playing now now when I went to launch either game steam would tell me it it is running, but nothing happens so I must terminate the process.

Through process of elimination I updated my nvidia driver (did nothing), uninstalled and reinstalled some redistributable packages (did nothing), even uninstalled and reinstalled the games (still nothing). Lastly I simply clicked to uninstall the fixes and now the games launch. I don't know about you but playing Zestiria at 30 fps for everything would drive me nuts after tasting 60.

Got any insight on why my system suddenly won't launch the games with the fixes installed?

Heck the only reason I was launching them was to test my new dualshock 4 and I came across this little oddity.