Hey. New here, and I have a question regarding emulation.

[JimmyCane]

Alright, just to set the record straight, I have purchased the game from this site...
http://www.himeyashop.com..._info.php/products_id/253

Now, I don't have a PS2 with me here at college, and I don't plan on buying a Japanese one, or modding the one I already have (which, like I said, isn't here).

If I rip the game onto my computer using the tool that Cless recommended and patch the ISO file with the translation, can I play that patched ISO with an emulator? If so, which emulator should I use? No one has to post any links because I know exactly where to find it once I learn which is the most compatible emulator.

If this has already been answered before in previous topics and this topic is virtually made useless let me just say I have been an avid Tales fan since '99 when I first played Destiny. I've played every single Tales released in America (which isn't many =( ) and I played Phantansia before it was released on the GBA thanks to the ZSNES and DeJap. ToD is my all time favorite game, and when I learned of a real sequel, (not ToD II/ToE) I got pretty pumped. When I learned it would never come to the US I got pretty bummed. Then I learned about Rebirth, and the countless other Tales that never came over to America.

This translation would basically makes my video gaming dreams come true, and I commend and appreciate the efforts of Cless and his staff.

Thanks alot and keep up the hard work.

[Cless]

Hate to break it but emulation right now isn't ready for a serious ToD2 play. Some features are broken (cooking submenu doesn't even work), and you'll need a powerful computer to run it at a good framerate. Even my E8400 and Radeon 4850 still experience weird slowdowns in the menus and battle.

[JimmyCane]

All that aside, is there an emulator that is better suited than the rest to play ToD 2?

[pedrocasilva]

All that aside, is there an emulator that is better suited than the rest to play ToD 2?

There's only a suitable PS2 emulator and there will only be one for a long time.

It's getting better, but like Cless said... it's very buggy.

[JimmyCane]

I finally got it up and running on PCSX2. I sort of touched upon this in another topic but I'll explain my misadventures with the emulator here.

Well, when I first got the game in the mail I tried using PCSX2 to run it straight off the disk. Didn't work for me, no matter what I tried. So I got ImgBurn and did all that jazz. I experimented with it using the normal Japanese ISO. I could not get the game to run faster than 25-30 fps. And cutscenes ran at a measly 12-19 fps. I was getting pretty frustrated, but I kept trying different BIOs and plugins. Nothing really worked.So I just decided to apply the patch, which is awesome by the way, and continued to experiment.

Finally I downloaded the 0.9.5 version of the emulator and found the "Speed Hack" option under Config. Obviously it's risky to use, and it really sucks up my RAM. Then I was finally able to pump it up to an average of about 50~ fps. It runs pretty smooth (as smooth as 50~ fps will take you at least) and everything is in sync. 

What really gets me is that my laptop has some pretty solid specs, so I don't know why it was running so slowly, and why it still refuses to run at a solid 60 fps (I think I hit 60 once, during a "fade to black" transition screen). It's kind of sad and insulting to my computer that I needed to use the speed hack to even get it close to 60 fps.

My system specs are...

Intel Core 2 Duo T5550 @ 1.83 GHz
CPU Speed: 1.83 GHz Performance Rated at 3.56 GHz
4 GB of RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTS (With apparently 2.2 GBs of vRAM, I got this off of SystemRequirementsLab)
Direct X 10.0
I am also using Windows Vista Home Premium

Can someone explain why I can't run this game (as well as other PS2 games) well? Does it have to do with the BIOs I am using or the plugins? Maybe some other feature/update I don't have? I tried it with other games that are definitely on the emulator's compatibility list (like, you can play them from beginning to end) and it still runs poorly. I tried it with Tales of the Abyss and Final Fantasy XII.

If anyone reads through that wall of text, and knows some answers to my problems any advice would be greatly appreciated.

*EDIT*
By the way, I have played games like Crysis (on lowish settings), Spore (not too strenuous but definitely more tasking that PS2 caliber games), Bioshock,  Warhammer Online (on the highest settings) and  TeS IV: Oblivion (on the highest settings and modded out to the extreme) on this machine. So why can't I run a PS2 emulator? Not only that, but a game like ToD2, which is mainly 2D graphics?

[Leiw]

Simply because the ps2 emulator doesn't emulate to 100% the real hardware

You could have a 80 core 5 Ghz processor and 10 Terabyte of RAM, if the emulator doesn't know how to use all the ps2 instructions, iop codes etc correctly you just won't be able to play it like on real hardware


and as for PC games, they have been directly programmed for the x86 architecture, so you can't really compare those two

[JimmyCane]

That makes perfect sense. I'll just have to deal until I get a PS2 I can mod.

[Kajitani-Eizan]

you need a faster processor. i have 2.0 ghz core 2 duo on my laptop and it's much better than what you're saying, assuming you're talking about ToD2. it will hit issues and slow down or desync sometimes, but mostly it runs at full or almost full speed. the new "sweet spot" for medium-high end laptops, 2.4 ghz, should be even better. i think you need a desktop overclocked to like 3.5 GHz or so to get great speeds on just about everything, though.

also, you are using PCSX2 VM + multithreading/dual core mode + GSDX, right? TLB is WAY slower, lack of dual core is WAY slower, zerogs can be slower, etc.

[JimmyCane]

I have all those options selected and they are turned on. I am also using GSDX. I try to select all the options that speed up framerate.