I ran into similar problems.  The game would load the title screen, but after I logged in, the screen would render and then the game would crash.  In my case, I believe that it had something to do with the sound renderer.  I edited my psclient.cfg and put the semicolon back in front of the line: System.PlugIns.iSoundRender = Crystalspace.sound.render.software

The game seems to work fine for me now.