My favorite thing about picking up a retro emulation handheld is using it to play through these old games. It's more like an ebook reader in my mind than a game console when I load it up just with story-dense RPG/strategy/adventure games instead of arcade and action games.
The thing that unlocked it for me was taking a save state at pretty much every "scene" or big story beat. A lot of these games lack a good way of tracking where you are in the story, and picking up/putting down a deep game in short increments can be hard to get reoriented, so I got in a habit of loading one or two saves back when I restart playing after a break. Replaying a minute or so is usually more than enough to remember what's going on and what I need to do next.
The thing that unlocked it for me was taking a save state at pretty much every "scene" or big story beat. A lot of these games lack a good way of tracking where you are in the story, and picking up/putting down a deep game in short increments can be hard to get reoriented, so I got in a habit of loading one or two saves back when I restart playing after a break. Replaying a minute or so is usually more than enough to remember what's going on and what I need to do next.