Oh God no Meatforce. The dead rising save system is totally borked.
Nah. It's strict, to be sure -- and probably unnecessary as well.. but I've played through that game four times now starting with a level 1 character, and the save system works just fine.
The thing about Dead Rising is that the game is built around a design philosophy that actually expects and rewards replaying it. That concept trips a lot of people up, and understandably so -- we're used to playing a narrative story straight-through from beginning to end with little repetition, so the concept of re-doing sections until we've mastered them is unfamiliar.
But this game is actually designed to get easier the more you play sections and work out the most efficient way through.. if you die, you still keep your XP, so you'll have that much of an easier time getting through there the next time.. and - I really can't stress this enough -
there are LOTS of places to save your progress, and they're never that far away once you know where to find them (which is another product of having played through areas repeatedly).
Once you hit about level 25 or 30 (there are 50), it is really very hard to get yourself killed as long as you think about what you're doing and don't go into a situation without at least a bit of a plan.. at level 50, you're nearly impossible to kill unless you totally fuck up.
Seriously -- I understand why people complain about the save system, but they really don't need to. It absolutely works 100% just fine.
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I'm not even angry. I'm being so sincere right now, even though you broke my heart and killed me.