As someone who has dealt with a couple dozen Surface devices in a corporate setting, I cannot recommend them. They’re fine when they work. When they have issues though, they are practically impossible to repair. Keyboard port issues, dock connection issues, bricked devices, and even expanding batteries are all issues I’ve run into. When you have an issue, Microsoft will just swap it out for a different one rather than fix the device.
I loved Anarchy Online back in the day. I don’t think I ever did anything particularly in depth on it, but I remember being proud that I had an in game apartment and a flying car thing.
I haven’t noticed a huge difference between NetherSX2 classic and 3668, but the only thing I’ve been playing is FFX International. Both play it just fine on my device (Moto One 5G Ace running LineageOS).
While unfortunate, it’s not difficult to still run AetherSX2 or its successor, NetherSX2. There was some drama around the Play Store version of AetherSX2 anyway. The Play Store version had ads.
If you want to run an older version of AetherSX2, I recommend v1.5-3668. I believe that is the last version before ads were added. It is missing some performance improvements though. At this point you would have to find an APK of it to install manually.
What I really recommend is to use NetherSX2, which is the successor to AetherSX2. There are two versions, Classic and Modern. Classic is generally the better performer unless you want to run certain games - specifically snowblind engine games (Baldur’s Gate, Champions of Norrath). You just download the patcher from github, download an APK of AetherSX2, run the patcher, and copy/install the resulting APK file.
I have a Steam deck, so I have used it for a lot of emulation. I’ve actually been playing on my phone lately. I bought a USB-C controller that holds my phone. Using Retroarch for most older stuff, but I have the following emulators installed separately: