Episode 1 was a total classic for me. The best game on F95. I even supported the project on Pateron a few times.
But when episode 2 came out... oh god... Total disaster. in the end, episode 2 led to me removing the game from my favorites and checking in once a year. A game update that makes a save NOT compatible with the previous version of the game and either start over or enjoy a scrap called a save from the game developer is NOT what I want. + new update = a lots of bugs.
Out of five stars, the maximum I can give is 2 but that's only because I played episode 1.
If I were a new player... I wouldn't even bother voting
It's quite common for Devs to change functionality in the middle of games, requiring a restart. There is literally no way around that kind of issue, if you want the MC to follow a particular path. Remember this isn't caused by a change to content, but a change to the basic function which affects every aspect of the game. Once that becomes necessary, then old saves automatically become problematic, because they rely on the old functionality which no longer exists.
I know this is very frustrating. I had 6 different routes set up for this game, and I will have to repeat them all from the beginning again if I wish to continue with them. But that's just the way it is. Sometimes it's necessary for Devs to make major changes to their games, because not doing anything would eventually break the game completely. Hopefully, this will be the last time this will be necessary (but don't quote me on that).
This is still my favourite game, despite all the issues it has had during Chapter 2 ( which have given me as many moments of exasperation, as I'm sure they've given to you and others). However, I believe the Devs will get it right eventually, because I know they are both absolutely passionate about this project, and feel all these failings far more keenly than you or me. Awake has already admitted that he made major coding errors early on in Chapter 2, that were not discovered until months after they were made .
As I've explained on previous occasions, this is understandable because he was intially brought into the game purely as a writer and not to deal with technical stuff. But Deep decided to give him more responsibility, in an attempt to speed up new updates ( which hasn't so far happened, because of having to deal with the issues caused by those early errors). So he's pretty much been learning coding from scratch, as he went along. And he made a few mistakes, which have caused a lot of issues. And all these changes in recent updates are an attempt to put these right.
The problem is, when you make errors in the basic functionality, it's very difficult to retrospectively correct them. Because after a few updates, it pretty much affects all the content in the game. So just tinkering around with the game doesn't solve those issues anymore. And you have to change all the faulty functionality, or the game will eventually break completely. And that's why old saves don't work. Because they rely on something, that has been removed from the game completely.