Though technically it was too, I accidentally restarted the first through the in-game restart modes.
Second one I just blatantly gave myself enough money to get to the monstrous amounts of clippers so it takes only minutes to proceed to the second part.
I replayed it last week and managed under 6 hours (2nd time). Probably some poor ordering of perks; plus I shut off the auto-bet thing to find I needed a lot more of the resource it provided. Otherwise I found this playthrough pretty straightforward, and could probably do it in a few hours now.
Really, it's about getting to space then being able to configure your drones to survive fights and explore.