These days I am trying to play some of the android games on PC. And I am using emulators for the same. Currently I have installed KOPlayer. And have few games going on. I may consider high RAM based games soon, now that I am on PC, it'd be not so bad performance playing it on PC instead of phone.
I've never touched an Emulator before. Not even an Android Emulator. I have never thought about touching one. Yet, I'd prefer to stay away from them. Just to be on the Safe-Side of things.
Lot of emulators are out there and you can check their performance on youtube. For example, Windows has DOSbox emulator to play DOS games in old arcade days. And there is also Koplayer emulator for Android games.
Apart from that I am sure there are some of the emulators that you can try within android phone itself.