enjoy your terrible emulation experience and having to use hacks so games are even playable then.
You're exaggerating a lot.
->PCSX2 isn't that bad:
PCSX2 offers a good experience with most games with the Hardware Renderer. Years ago I played some games fine with my cheap laptop and today I can't find any unplayable game with my new Legion 5 laptop (Ryzen 7 4800H, GTX2060).
If the Hardware render have issues with some games, you can always use the much more compatible Software mode. You'll lose the HD rendering, but the image won't be worse than the real PS2 you prefer.
->Hacks are inevitable for very exotic hardware like PS2:
PS2's emotion engine behaves way different than a x86 CPU, with features with no modern equivalent and way faster data transfers with lower latency than our RAM.
Emulating all that right would make the emulator unplayable slow. Hacks are a reasonable solution.
Just check the game entry in the official wiki to see what the game needs.
->PCSX2 isn't the only emulator with hacks:
The great Dolphin emulator also has got hacks. "Store XFB to Texture Only", MMU off, the non-deterministic "Dual Core" mode... years ago, HLE audio was considered a unreliable speedhack compared to the slow LLE audio.
The same could be said of RPCS3 or PPSSPP.
The big difference between PCSX2 and Dolphin is in Dolphin's game.ini. The GC/Wii emulator can automatically disable problematic hacks in problematic games, so the hacks are pretty invisible for the users.
Although PCSX2 can auto-apply the CPU hacks, but GS (GPU) hacks must be enabled manually. That is because, until months ago, GS was a separated plugin.
But the situation may improve soon(ish) now the GS plugin is part of the emulator.
Dolphin had the luck the GC/Wii hardware (quite un-standard, but not as much as PS2) and most games doing normal things allow them to skip problems. If every GC/Wii game were like
Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike, using crazy undocumented features MMU, BAT tables, Z-freeze... complex shaders like Metroid Prime 3... forced interlacinglike Dragon Ball Tenkaichi3... or relied in icache, GPU timings and hardware bugs like other games... Dolphin performance would fall dramatically and the only way to make it work decently would be with hacks and patches. Then, you would be thinking that Dolphin is hacky and terrible, despite doing its best.
Fortunately, most GC/Wii games don't do that. Unfortunately, that kind of things are more common in PS2.
->PCSX2 has been improving a lot during the last years
- The OpenGL backend improved in speed and compatibility, becoming the best mode. Some of its improvements were ported to Direct3D11 mode.
- Those improvements made some hacks unnecessary and were removed.
- The Code clean-ups (plus the OpenGL mode) allow the team to port it to Linux again.
- Then a Retroarch core.
- And a native 64bits build (it's being polished)
- Every month they fix more glitches and broken games, you can read about them in the official website blog
- Weeks ago, they fixed the last unbootable games and it can run any game (although that doesn't mean flawlessly)
->PCSX2 can do much more than a real PS2:
- Higher resolution, shaders, texture filters
- Overclock to remove slowdowns
- Automatic widescreen patches
- 60fps hacks
- Fully customizable controls, with any pads
- Easy video/audio capture
- Custom texture packs (in a fork)
- Fast disk speed hack for lower loading times (although a modded PS2 could do the same, it's limited by the USB or LAN speed)
- Easy cheat management (I guess a modded PS2 could so the same, it would be less practical)
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