"The fact it could be stolen from was not obvious at all."
There's an explanation point over the chest which you can steal from. Its literally blinking.
And it appears in front of the merchant that way. Hence, leading to think the only interaction point is the merchant.
You have 25 save slots, all of which can be used at any time you have control. You're more than free to use them to reload if you'd like to make different choices or if you believe you've messed up somehow. You do not need to "restart everything from scratch."
Do you realize the stupidity of that statement? If you have let's say 4 choices, each with 4 choices as well, that's already 16 slots. The time needed just to continue with each updates becomes near impossible. Try BADIK with only 3 routes (chicks, diks and neutral), and see the result. The bigger the game is, the more choices there are, the more near impossible it is to do everything or even keep track of which choices were picked.
"A new player will be quite easily be put in an impass." No, you and a few token others were "put at an impass" because you didn't pay attention and were too lazy to dare try something, and defaulted to cheating. You didn't even bother to lower the difficulty level and trying the fight before editing your file. If you're that quick to give up, there's nothing I can do for you. Stop whining.
I cheated on my third run, which was already putting me nearly 2hours in because I could not skip what was already seen, so yes, I cheated, bite me.
Not knowing which stats to which level will be required, is not the player's fault. You simply can not know the conditions, and since this happens fairly early on, and there are 0 activity to correct any miss, yes, a new player can get stuck if the agility and combat are too low. In case you haven't noticed, there are more than two options to level, and ending up under 20 for the only two actually useful at that event, is dead easy. If this happens this early on, I dread to think what will happen when the game will required 50+ skill checks.
I can pretty much guarantee that a large chunk of players will simply edit their stats, rather than replay everything from scratch once the game gets lengthier, the time needed tio redo everything, is simply not worth it, it is after all, just a game.
