Just finished the fight with the Draug to life the curse and, luckily, I beat it on my second attempt,but seriously, being forced to reply the lead up to that and no ability to auto save directly before was an awful, awful design decision.

I really wouldn't mind if the game auto-saved after every fight or at least let me manually do so. Having group fights in succession and no break inbetween is just a pure exercise in frustration, especially considering how quickly most of the bosses can kill you in this game.