Well I'll be damned, I may have fixed it?!
That new game I just made was on my OLD profile, I went back to my current profile, loaded my latest game and loaded in as Valeera / Hero 1.....
What fixed this issue? What caused this issue? Both good questions, but all I can say are the things i did between it being completely buggy and now working.
-I Deleted a good 20+ saves on both profiles, leaving only 3 saves each.
-Ran that diagnostics tool you gave me and made my report
-Created a new game on profile 1 and played for a bit and tested the issue
-returned to profile 2 and the issue SEEMS to have disappeared
So this could possibly be related to data size / to many saved games? Dirty edits? did that tool clean up my saves?
but maybe I should investigate further before getting my hopes up, lol. It loaded in as Valeera and that's enough to make me happy again.