Here's Demon's Souls running in the RPCS3 PS3 emulator

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."

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.

Shaun Prescott

Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day.