Last year, Demon's Souls was considered 'playable' on PC courtesy of the RPCS3 PS3 emulator. Now, From Software and Hidetaka Miyazaki's original nightmarescape looks great in 4K and 30 fps.
In case seeing Persona 5 wasn't impressive enough, here's footage of another big PS3 game — Demon's Souls — being entirely playable on a PC courtesy of an emulator.
The 'massive' performance boost comes as a result of Nekotekina's recent SPU recompiler improvements, so says the following video's description—which is showcased with an i7-6700k. 'You might notice the occasional badly paced frame or so, but compared to the 20 fps mess for example Boletarian Palace was at before this is just amazing,' reads the description. 'And it's not like a real PS3 is any better in this regard.'
To my shame, I've only ever dipped in and out of Demon's Souls despite being very fond of the action roleplayer series that's followed. And while it features high on my 'Old Games I Really Must Make Time For' list, I'm often terrified to take the plunge.
I mean, those ghastly Mind Flayers in the Tower of Latria (as featured around the one minute mark above) look like a combination of Dark Souls 3's Irithyll Dungeon Jailers, Bloodborne's Chime Maidens and the first Dark Souls' bad ending Solaire. Sorry, but that's all kinds of nope.
Demon's Souls Pc
I don't fancy the narrow, Blighttown-esque catwalks of the Valley of Defilement either, but I guess navigating them in 4K and a handsome framerate is promising. Perhaps this is enough to finally send me to the Boletarian Palace and beyond.
Last week, we covered the RPCS3 PS3 emulator's interpretations of God of War: Ascension and God of War 3. It seems its slant on The Last of Us is making headway, too. Here's that:
Rpcs3 Demon Souls Iso Download
On the subject of emulation, the following from Wes is worth your time. The ethics of emulation: how creators, the community, and the law view console emulators.
One of the most infuriating absences on PC is Demon's Souls – From Software's direct predecessor to the Dark Souls series, which released exclusively for PS3 in 2009. Or at least, it's infuriating if you refuse to use an emulator, though even that hasn't been a great option due to struggles optimising the build.
But the creators of the RPCS3 PS3 emulator have been steadily chipping away at the stubborn exclusive, and now they consider it 'playable' on PC. The footage below is running on an i7-6700k and still suffers from performance issues, but at least the build can be enjoyed.
'Since we last looked at Demon's Souls there have been major improvements to the stability of the game,' the creators wrote in the YouTube description. 'Earlier the game would randomly but with high certainty hang on loading screens making it very hard to progress. Moreover the audio was buggy and the sound mixer thread would randomly crash, which in turn would soon crash the rest of the game.
'But these stability issues have been fixed. Although performance is not optimal even on an i7-6700k the game is fully working and runs stable. Therefore it is considered playable, but perhaps not fully enjoyable.'
Demon Souls Pc Download
It's the joint work of Nektekina and kd-11, with the former also responsible for breakthroughs on the Persona 5 PS3 emulation. To read more about the emulator or to download it, this is where you'll need to go.