'For fun and challenge:' The team that ported Jak and Daxter to PC has done the same for Jak 2 [run the ps2 game natively with custom engine and no emulator]
Great to know it's not just me that's mad about this. I had the HD trilogy on PS3 and was incredibly disappointed that the new versions are straight up worse. I wanted to play them again on PS4 but I just ended up waiting until the PS3 emulator runs well enough.
Just a shame that Sony isn't treating this series with the respect it deserves. Jak and Daxter is one of my favorite series ever and it feels like nobody from the new generation of gamers has ever played it.
RPCS3 is running fairly well in my experience. It can be a bit hit or miss on what games work, but a lot of the most popular games run fine. There's even upscaling to 4K and getting games to run a 60 FPS that originally only did 30.
Poke around on here and see if what you're looking for is playable. You'll even find workarounds and optimizations for specific games (MGS4 is a big one for this)
I’ve played Jak 1 on OpenGAOL with 101% completion. It’s an amazing job. i can’t wait to do the same for Jak 2. Those games are a little painful to emulate what with the hacks required to fix shadows.