Unity's Particle System seems to be absolutely broken when it comes to Emit()

Trying to use Emit(1) to simulate weapons fire, however, it never emits beyond first emission. I've tried using Stop(), Clear(), but this thing is driving me insane after 3 hours of playing with settings.

  if (Input.GetMouseButtonDown(0))
  {
        particleSys.Emit(1);
  }

The worst part of this is that changing some of the settings while in play mode causes it to work, but then implementing those settings into the prefab - the same settings that just worked while they were changed in play mode, those settings do not work when restarting the scene after saving the particle system settings.

For example, checkign looping to true whle in play mode will cause Emit(1) to fire properly but only if it is checked off while the scene is in play mode. If I were to save those settings on the prefab and restart the scene, the settings that just worked before when applied while the scene was in play will now not work to emit the particle on Emit(); if they were preapplied and saved.

Does anyone, for the love of god, know how to just simple emit 1 particle on command that doesn't involve instantiating a new gameobject with each time I need to emit that particle? This was supposed to be something simple and not waste an entire night on something so basic. Working with Unreal Engine then working with this, Unity can be an absolute nightmare with the simplest of tasks.

Thanks.