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The biggest hazard with the ladder-style story progression structure is that all the heroines but the 'true' heroine get gypped. Aoi Tori, at least, has the advantage that all the paths are technically 'true' in an alternate worlds sense, but it still feels like the heroines other than Akari aren't really getting treated equally. In the case of Aiyoku no Eustia, the author failed utterly to create internal consistency, as his setting (both the general one and the heroines' settings) made any path other than Tia's path impossible within the greater context of the story. This is actually a trend with a lot of writers who like to use the ladder-style, where they fail to maintain internal consistency due to a half-assed attitude toward the non-true heroines' stories.

Saving is obviously very essential function in the game, especially since no one would want to replay the game from the beginning had they lost the progress without saving the game. Granted there are some games that didn't have save feature, but those games are quite rare. Anyway other than the obvious saving the progress, people find a number of ways to exploit the save system. Well most VNs obviously has the first type when it come to save system, which may be happen because the gameplay of the VN is basically the cutscenes and so the developers make sure that you can save anytime. Note that I say most VNs, because there are VNs that still abide to force the player saving in the save points and not saving in the narration, like Ar Tonelico trilogy with Gust pretty much treated it as RPG despite VNs element in Cosmosphere. Speaking of saving freely, we have Persona 2 allow us to save freely in the dungeon which is very notable because usually in RPG the player can only save freely in the world map whilst you need to search for the save points in the dungeon (Which could also act as the warning that bosses await the players after the save points). For auto save only, it's very rare for the VN to use it with the only example that I knew is Rance Quest. Obviously this feature limit the player ability to be able to exploit the save system, so the player need to live with their unwanted progress, which bring in mind of mobile game whereas the game immediately save any activities that the player make for the very obvious reasons. For the non-mobile game, we have the infamous Getting Over It that the players mention as very difficult with one of the feature that make it harsh is the save system with it'll automatically save any progress the players make, whether it's favorable for them or not with the player has easy time to lost a big progress. For the third type of save system, single save shot, on paper I can see if the game tried to challenge the player to be careful with their chance to save the game. In practice though, obviously the player would see the walkthrough just so they can go through the game without much problem, at least when it come to the game like Phoenix Wright in which the single save slot is the artifact from their game way back in GBA. Since you also mention that Capcom add the additional save slots in Ace Attorney PC version, I agree the new feature may feel odd for some people seeing there's no much need to make multiple saves in the game besides to replay the player's favorite scene in one of the chapters. That's all for what I can write in regard of the topic.

With JVNs, in particular untranslated ones, saves are intricately intertwined with how people play the game, with save points being specifically recommended in walkthroughs to shorten replay time when moving to other routes or filling out CGs and scenes. A lot of people who make walkthroughs for translated games in English have a tendency not to transfer this system over, even if they used a Japanese walkthrough as a base, a lack of convenience I found notable, even if I honestly don't know why. If you want to look for an ideal form of this kind of walkthrough, Foolmaker (gusha no Yakata) is still preserved at the Sagaoz website (along with game saves for a lot of old VNs) and contains a bunch of efficiency walkthroughs that save at the latest point possible for each path split, which is why I generally recommend it for people playing old JVNs. Seiya-Saiga, which is the oldest surviving walkthrough producer for visual novels in Japanese, still releases walkthroughs for all the releases in a given month. They also place save points at key points in progression to make things easier for readers who have less time and don't want to have to figure things out themselves.

The apocalypse genre is greatly influenced by the post-war (WWII) mentality. In post-war Japan, which rebuilt after seeing most of their major cities firebombed and their industry destroyed, the concept of an apocalypse was much closer to reality, not the least because of the nuclear bombings. Similarly, much of Europe's urban landscape was a ruin due to the bombings from both sides, and rebuilding afterward was a colossal undertaking that made it easy for the Soviet Union to take over a massive portion of the continent like it did, through means both forceful and more subtle. As a result, most apocalypse genre works in all mediums are descended from the ones inspired by this era and the threat of nuclear war that persisted through much of the twentieth century afterward. For a generation that had witnessed the disintegration of two major cities and now had multiple hostile powers possessing similar - even more powerful - weapons, it was much, much easier to imagine the annihilation of humanity than it was for previous generations. Most current works are evolutions on the same ideas as those from that era. There is a sense of cynicism about human nature, a sense of helplessness when it comes to an individual's ability to effect outcomes, and a sense of desperation for survival that influences preppers and all other sorts of people even today. I personally would like to offer the most unique variation on the post-apocalypse experience I've seen in a VN (or rather the most modern one). Komorebi no Nostalgica. This VN is unique in that, at first, it is difficult to tell that this is a post-apocalypse landscape. The characters are living normal, peaceful lives in a seemingly super high-tech world, but when they discover an ancient android, the predecessor to the sentient AI androids called the Metosera that now live as independent sapients amongst them, the perspective changes drastically. While the basic atmosphere remains soft and disconnected from what came before, the characters are slowly confronted with a line of thought that predates their current society and the remnants of the old war. Another example of an interesting apocalypse story would be Evolimit, one of my all-time favorite VNs and written by the same author as Tokyo Babel. I'm going to spoiler this one as well, since I intend to just talk openly about various aspects of the setting and story. Baldr Sky (all of the series) is a perfect example of the post-apocalypse and apocalypse genres.