Anyone?

Not sure if this will help but have you tried adding the game to your antivirus 'Exclude' list? This has worked for me in the past.

As you say, there is no earthly reason the game would take more than a few seconds to launch and restore a save game on your system. The engine is particularly backward compatible, I know, since I could play it without a dedicated graphics card, on a laptop with 2GB RAM. My new system loads the game to the menu in under six seconds, and about the same for loading a save game. Your system should be even faster.

Therefore the source of your problem is probably "the usual background nonsense".

As the previous poster noted, Antivirus is a good candidate for meddling in games (because the procedural loading of areas and scripts in the background triggers the AV alert).

I'm still new to Win-10, but there are lots of potential busy-body processes that might be causing this, too, and many third-party apps that might be a problem.

For my old system (Intel mobile CPU with integrated graphics) I had to play the game at a reduced resolution (640×480) with all the graphical options off.

If you are still stuck, try reducing the options (there is no need with your system to reduce the resolution below whatever your screen has as native, probably Full HD 1920×1080 or more likely 4k, with your configuration). Remeber to restart the game from the menu when changing options, as they won't necessarily change until you do exit back and reload the save / start a new game / continue on.

Finally, I would drop a line to Gog. They are friendly and very helpful and will probably solve the issue in minutes. :)

Well I was going to suggest looking at your save game count, but at < 20 it can't be that.

I've previously has issues with the Kreuzbazaar when I first bought the game - but that was on an ancient system which not only had an ancient graphics card, but also had ancient RAM - and only around 2 GB or so (it may have actually been below the minimum specs at the time, or at best right on the min specs).

That was fixed as soon as I moved to a better system with more RAM and newer HD (non-SSD).

Final thought - have you looked at your log file (should be in <install_location>\Dragonfall_data\output_log.txt)? It may provide some hints at least, such as lots of attempts at reading something that doesn't exist, or that's in the wrong location and/or incorrect permissions, etc.