I was previously under the impression that a game wouldn't save natively unless you open the menu, close the content, then go back another menu to close the emulator, which to me was just a tad excessive, especially for RPGs where an airhead like me could lose a lot of invested time by doing something as simple as hitting the HOME button.
However M4XW explained that I only need to close the content for it to save, which is decent enough. After cleaning up the menus by disabling/hiding a bunch of stuff that doesn't really work (favorites/media player/etc) the menus are a lot cleaner now, so hopefully I won't accidentally lose any progress.
Ideally, I'd prefer saving in game to be enough, and not be required to fiddle with an emulator for the save to go through, but it seems like that's not possible atm.