I like the idea of this game. I love the worldbuilding, the historical accuracy, characters, story, etc. But I cannot get over how it works as a game. It feels somewhat unintuitive at times, not telling you even the things it does well, such as how much practicing with Bernard and upgrading your combat skills means a whole lot when fighting real enemies. But I can get over the somewhat unintuitive features and janky mechanics. What I cannot get over is the way you save the game, and more explicitly - the way the game saves itself. As a person who has limited time for gameplay in a week, the way the game handles saving my progress is such an insult to my time that I doubt I will bring myself to finishing it, despite loving the world and caring for the story. Option 1) Save the game by sleeping in a bed your character owns or rents (yes, not any bed will do). I have no problem only saving the game a certain way, but then it would make sense to make that way quickly available at any point in an open world game. Fast travel isn't just a loading screen here. Option 2) Quicksaves get you drunk. They are only possible by drinking a special kind of alcoholic potion, so you are punished by having to obtain them and then by drinking them. Option 3) Autosaves. This is it. They are far too rare. Normally they happen at the beggining and end of a quest. They do not occur as your quest objective changes. There are no checkpoints and at this stage the immersive world becomes a hindrance. If you get too engrossed and forget to save and you wonder how a situation might have been resolved differently, or you die? Tough luck, you have an hour to replay. This has happened way too many times for me. Even worse when I was doing a few quests in an area in a bunch. I had 3 hours to replay because I got mobbed and killed. That was a gaming session I had been looking for for 4 days. I don't know. If you got the time and less curiosity than me, then go ahead. You'll have a good time.
