Digital Foundry's Thomas Morgan recently conducted a thorough evaluation of Bloodborne using the ShadPS4 emulator, focusing on the game's performance and the enhancements provided by modders. For his tests, Morgan utilized the ShadPS4 0.5.1 build by diegolix29, which is based on a custom branch developed by raphaelthegreat. This particular build demonstrated the most promising results when tested on a PC equipped with an AMD Ryzen 7 5700X processor and a GeForce RTX 4080 GPU.
Morgan suggested the installation of the Vertex Explosion Fix mod to address visual artifacts, such as stretched or misplaced polygons. While this mod disables facial customization at the start of the game, it effectively eliminates these visual bugs. Importantly, no other critical mods are necessary, as the emulator itself includes a built-in menu for managing various enhancements. These enhancements allow users to enable 60 fps support, increase resolution up to 4K, or turn off chromatic aberration.
Despite some occasional stuttering, Morgan observed that Bloodborne maintained a steady 60 fps for the most part. He also experimented with higher resolutions, such as 1440p and 1800p, noting a significant improvement in image detail but also a decline in performance and an increase in crashes. Therefore, Morgan recommends playing Bloodborne on the ShadPS4 emulator at 1080p or 1152p to balance performance and stability.
Morgan praised the ShadPS4 team for their groundbreaking work in PS4 emulation, emphasizing that while Bloodborne performs admirably on the emulator, it is not without its technical challenges.