Hi! Appreciate the feedback! For anyone else struggling, the strategy is to time defensive stance with his big attacks (every third turn) or guard. I do hear you though, it leaves little margin for error so I’ll consider rebalancing. And I will make sure autosave is properly integrated for the next release to avoid the scenario you mentioned :)
There is some additional gameplay in chapter 2, no group content yet or planned. On manual saving, should work like any Renpy game, sorry if you had issues!
Thanks for the nice words and thanks for playing! :)