Ensure the ISO is on your internal storage rather than a slow SD card.
If your CPU is struggling, drop this to -1 or -2 . This reduces the demand on your processor at the cost of slight internal game slowdowns.
A legitimate, uncompressed ISO of God of War II is approximately because it contains high-quality pre-rendered cinematics and complex textures spread across two layers. God Of War 2 Ps2 Iso Highly Compressed
Create a new text document in that folder and paste the following command: chdman createcd -i "God of War 2.iso" -o "God of War 2.chd"
Poorly ripped or over-compressed ISOs often cut out game data to save space. If your game consistently crashes during specific cutscenes (a common issue with broken God of War II rips), you are likely using a "ripped" version where the game videos were deleted. You will need to source a clean, unripped ISO. A Note on Legal and Safe Downloading Ensure the ISO is on your internal storage
You might ask: Why not just play the original? Here is why the ISO route is superior for modern gamers:
If you download a highly compressed God of War II file (usually ending in .7z , .rar , or .zip ), you must properly extract it before your emulator can read it. A legitimate, uncompressed ISO of God of War
If you launch God of War 2 in PCSX2 and just see a black screen, it is often a shader cache or renderer conflict. Switch your renderer from OpenGL to Vulkan or D3D12. If that doesn't work, go to the PCSX2 menu and clear your shader cache manually in the Cache folder, then restart.