I was amazed too! 40 Mb for a save file is astounding, a thousandth of the Kiwix package of the whole text of Wikipedia. How many objects is it saving?
yea, play the game the way it was meant to be played
If the game was meant to be played without savescumming, they could easily limit the number of save slots available to a player.
There is a Honour Mode which limits the amount of saves to one.