waltc: 1) When and if I can buy it on GOG in a $25 sale--as I cannot see paying more for it--no reflection on *this* particular game, necessarily.

2) When and if the developers integrate a save-anytime/anywhere savegame function--I make a point of refusing to buy games that do not offer this convenience to the player/customer. It is a *major* point with me.

3) OK, I might be able to tolerate a "save and exit" savegame capability, *provided* that it isn't gimmicked up in some nutty way as a *part of the game itself.* Save-games are always the province of the player and should always, always remain outside of the game itself, in the same way that game developers do not ask potential customers/players of their games to "earn" things like high display resolutions, high-quality musical scores, voiced-over dialogue, etc. These are all *expected* when one buys a quality game--and a reason to part with even $25 of the customer/player's hard-earned cash...;)

Basically, I loathe games in which the developer is concerned about the complexity, depth, and breadth of his game, and so he wants to gin up the "hours played" and "difficulty" or "tension" part of his game experience by making the player go round his elbow to get to his thumb in order to simply *save* a game--or he invokes artificial time limits, etc.! I've heard that the exit/save is not really even on demand, and that you have to get some sort of silly plant or something before you can even save your game...?..;) WTF? It seems like such a cop out. I do not consider a player/customer-friendly savegame system to be an outlier...! Hard to believe the subject has to be discussed.

I welcome correction! But I am certainly not going to pay for software based on the fallacy that the mere act of saving the game is somehow a part of the RPG game itself...! All this stuff about "scum-saving" and so on...;) Who cares? It's a silly argument, since a save-on-demand system forces no one to scum-save at all...! But it's always nice when the developer gives his customer the choice of how to *save his frigging' games," eh? I'll say...;)

fragonard: Really? Making a potion in-game to save your game? How is that not the most meta-gamey thing possible?

squid830: Exactly. IMO the save system of a game should be separate from the rest of the game, and THAT will increase immersion - not brewing some potion that allows you to go back in time.

I don't have a huge problem with there being a mode which doesn't allow manual saves at all - just save on exit and auto-saves at regular and/or critical junctions (e.g. chapter transitions, before/after conversations, etc). That way people would be encouraged to go with whatever choices/consequences/actions they took instead of reloading to get through a scenario/conversation the "perfect" way. If the above had been the way the game was initially, I may not have bothered to look for a save mod.

However, with the lame schnapps saving, all they've done is limit the number of saves based on how many schnapps you can craft. Apparently it's possible to craft a vast amount of these not too long after gaining the ability to create them, so they've really just limited saving near the start, while having in-game crafting (which should be part of the game/simulation) become part of the meta game.

Shalabi: Do you guys think the game will be discounted during this back to school sale? If so, how much do you think the discount will be?

waltc: If you have been on the fence about this game up to now then I would highly recommend that you jump on it with both feet during the GOG 10th Anniversary Sale--three very decent games including this one--for the grand total of $25. I found it irresistible and now own the game--Galaxy is installing those ~40GBs even as I write this. By far I suspect this will be the best opportunity to score this game at a decent price for quite sometime...;)