Saves loading wrong ie creature at initial state

[Kihon]

Was on land 2 and game crashed. On restart it started as if I had not played yet, ie asked if I wanted to skip tutorial, asked if I wanted to start with my last(?) creature. Started a 'new' game skipping tutorial and using my last creature. Went straight into temple and tried to load the latest autosave or even my latest manual save but they cause a crash to desktop.
Got a previous save from about 2 hours before crash to load but the creature is back to its starting level i.e. is small and hasn't learnt anything, miracles etc!
Help!
Cheers