Digital Foundry's Thomas Morgan recently put Bloodborne through its paces using the ShadPS4 emulator, analyzing its performance and the impact of community-created enhancements.
For his evaluation, Morgan utilized ShadPS4 build 0.5.1 by diegolix29, a build stemming from raphaelthegreat's custom branch. After testing multiple builds, this version yielded the best performance on his system (AMD Ryzen 7 5700X CPU and GeForce RTX 4080 GPU).
Morgan suggests installing the Vertex Explosion Fix mod. While this mod disables pre-game character face customization, it effectively eliminates distracting visual glitches manifested as distorted or misplaced polygons. No other mods are strictly necessary; the emulator incorporates a built-in menu for managing various performance boosts, including 60fps support, resolutions up to 4K, and chromatic aberration toggling.
While occasional stutters were observed, Bloodborne maintained a largely stable 60fps framerate. Experiments with higher resolutions (1440p and 1800p) resulted in enhanced visual fidelity, but came at the cost of significant performance drops and frequent crashes. Therefore, Morgan advises sticking to 1080p (matching the PS4's native resolution) or 1152p for optimal gameplay.
Morgan concluded that the very existence of functional PS4 emulation, as demonstrated by ShadPS4's Bloodborne performance, is a remarkable feat. While acknowledging remaining technical imperfections, he deemed the emulator's rendition of Bloodborne largely successful.
