ok... so in this version, 2.5x, the saves from the previous should have worked. Nothing new with code changed, and that is confusing. 18% of stage 2 is correct - that's where I stopped and started the next events. As far as losing content, you haven't. I made a few changed to go with the new events that happen, and they do happen in order, that would be the reason why it seems to have less, but instead has more. When I updated the game to run in renpy 8.0.3 some of the code did change, but should have ported over to this version. I currently play this in renpy 8.0 with nothing lost from the 7.5 - It may be trying to use the old code? I can and will check this out as well before I post the next release this month.
Thank you for the feedback. Good or bad, it always helps with the development.