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PoE is a brilliant, complex and absorbing RPG and a most worthy successor to Baldur Gate etc. Unlike BG, (and despite the PoE inbuilt information system), its sheer complexity make it rather tricky for players to become familiar with all the various ways to play the game – particularly in something like character development. I bought and began playing the game in April 2015. Before I got close to the end of Chapter One, at the end of May 2015, I reluctantly had to gave up playing the game. After spending a couple of days getting the feel of the game controls, I started again from the beginning. Some 20 hours into the game, I began to notice load / reload times were getting longer and longer. Eventually I was spending too much time looking at a screen and it became obvious this situation was making the game unplayable. I checked the Obsidian website (and others) to see if this was a general experience. Apparently numerous people were experiencing screen handling issues but others stated they had noticed no problem apparently. A few weeks ago my PC was rebuilt with a clean instalment of Windows 7. Pillars now had 2 expansion modules to consider buying. I started a new game (which is connected through Steam). I anticipated that screen loading times would by now have been fixed – but the same problem is again occurring. I am now about 60% of the way through Chapter One and the game is slowing down appreciably. Because I am still trying to get to grips with the game’s AI, I would have liked to play the same battle a number of times over to see what a change to a character’s AI might do. However at this speed, it would take forever. The first save file created in the Encampment Area was 116 kb. The latest is 20 times that size. In last year’s attempt I stopped playing when the save files were 35 times larger than that. Is this to be expected? If so, the final saves are going be an extraordinary size. Could you please tell me if the situation I am experiencing can be corrected? Is it absolutely necessary for Save files to grow at this kind of rate? It seems possible that juggling this amount of data might cause the PC screen handling to be slow. Many thanks