I ended up getting the Legion Y540 laptop after all. It's really powerful and can handle just about everything with flying colors. More powerful than my desktop even, and for $1300 it was a solid deal.
Two issues:
-NES emulation doesn't work (wtf), at least Nestopia. Couldn't find any fix for it and switched to a different emulator which means I can't access any of my old save states, though regular saves are fine. This is a pretty minor deal over all, just weird that my super-computer can handle everything except an NES emulator. Looked up the problem and other people with Y540 have the same issue.
-The battery life is terrible, probably the worst of any laptop I've ever had. I'd put the battery life at about 1 hour unplugged, roughly. A little less if the brightness is turned up, a little more if it's turned down. Could probably get this better by fiddling with settings, or maybe mine just has a bad battery.
As for the keyboard debate I was having earlier in this (or maybe a different) thread I ended up going with
Amazon product ASIN B07WF9LCJV