I still hope that Play! emulator continues to develop. This emulator has been amazing from the very first time. Please continue to support the development of Play! emulator.
My situation is the same as yours, with screen flickering. Although they fixed a few instances where two battle scenes wouldn't display correctly, they sacrificed most of the normal battle scenes.
I think the image quality of Play is better than PCSX2, maybe it is just like the difference between JPCSP and PPSSP, so the running speed of Play will be much slower.