Gotcha, Thank you all

@Lucromis: Another workaround (for now) is to use save states in town instead of using the game's built-in saving system. If you limit yourself to only using it in town you can avoid the 'cheating' feeling lmao. To be honest though, for my own runs I'd just save at major doors (that require a key) and when going up/down stairs to a new floor so I could avoid backtracking too often.

@Lucromis: You should convert the ROMs obtained from Steam into a more standard format and then play them in any Sega Genesis/MegaDrive emulator you like. RetroArch is a great frontend for many emulators including Sega ones. Sega have made it clear they don't care for the fans anymore, as the egg on their face over the success of Sonic Mania caused them to lash out at the creators and cut ties with them. Last I heard, Sega dropped a fan-made Sonic model into an Unreal Engine demo map with a few hastily-imported fan-made props and made a trailer out of it. The internet rightly roasted em.

@Lucromis It's an issue with this emulator. For some reason, the latest patch introduced an issue with saves for mods, and d3t and Sega haven't bothered to fix it.

Anyone have any idea why the game refuses to save while using this mod?

Hello everyone!
I'm the one that released this mod over on RHDN and would like to post a quick bit here.
I am NOT the creator of this mod but I did contact the original author and received explicit permission to release this mod.

Here is the original author's forum post regarding this mod as I also had it in the readme: https://archive.is/HoXwC

Unfortunately I can NOT answer specific questions about this mod as I'm not the creator of it but it did inspire me to create my own mod (posted on the workshop by others here as 'ThornWood Terrors').

Back in the day I didn't use Steam so it is nice to see others enjoying this really old game.

I'm curious why there are people who feel the game is too hard as I played through the game and it is really easy (even if a bit grindy). Also there were always Game Genie codes to make things easier.

honnestly I finished this game numerous time, even reached level 99 (it says you're "fit" when you visit the shrine lol). It's still fairly easy and was a lot of fun

The original game honestly isn't that hard. If you aren't mapping your progress, it'll take you longer to get through it, but the game gives you enough tools to get through the game without too much difficulty. Kinda looking forward to trying this out. Hopefully they tweaked the item drop rates so you don't practically require the Demon Staff to make enemies give you their drop.

I agree. Fans of dungeon crawlers like this must be masochits, lol.

The game is already pretty hard , wish there was a mod that made it easier instead this is the only game in the shining series i haven't finished yet