The unofficial God of War 4-recomp project is attempting to port the PlayStation 2 version of the original God of War into a native PC application for Windows. The project has now progressed beyond the startup screens and menus, allowing entry into actual gameplay; under standard settings on the listed test configuration, it runs at approximately 12 frames per second.
Developers use PS2Recomp to pre-convert the original game's MIPS R5900 code into C++, which is then compiled into a 64-bit Windows application. Currently, over 6,400 functions in the original executable have been converted. Some PlayStation 2 system functionalities are reconstructed via separate runtime components, while the original IOP modules still run through an R3000A interpreter at this stage.
The project can now read data from the original ISO, play the opening cinematic, and accept input from keyboard or controller. Players can select difficulty and enter the game; in the Athens Harbor area, ships, Kratos, enemies, and the UI are all displayed. The developers have also confirmed that saving, loading, and reloading saves works correctly.
The aforementioned result of approximately 12 FPS comes from a test system featuring a Ryzen 7 5800XT and a Radeon RX 5700 XT. Enabling experimental independent threads for VU1 and graphics processing boosts the speed to around 25 frames per second, but this mode may freeze. The developers aim to eventually achieve a stable 30 frames per second; currently, audio stutters in sync with the running speed, graphics rendering still needs fixes, and the compiled VU1 microcode remains the primary performance bottleneck.