I fully agree with this recommendation - Tactics Ogre is a fantastic way to get into SRPGs. It's far less daunting than any of the Disgaea games and it has a ripping story too (far less cringe-worthy than the Fire Emblem ones). I love the FFT games, but there was soemthing tangably different...
I'm having this exact same problem, only with ALL my GBA games. They all play fine, but not a single one actually saves. To recap, I've made sure of the following:
1) The GBA expansion is firmly inserted
2) The ROM is set to "Patch Load"
3) I've followed the steps whereby you re-boot your DS...
The switch emulators on pc rely on your CPU mostly, and they only use a single core, so GPU not as important as a good CPU. I don't use switch emulator, but many here do, and willing to help.