Digital Foundry's Thomas Morgan conducted a thorough evaluation of Bloodborne on the ShadPS4 emulator, focusing on the game's performance and the technical enhancements introduced by modders. For his tests, Morgan utilized the ShadPS4 0.5.1 build by diegolix29, which is derived from a custom branch developed by raphaelthegreat. This particular build was chosen after testing multiple versions, as it delivered the best performance on a PC equipped with an AMD Ryzen 7 5700X processor and a GeForce RTX 4080 GPU.
Morgan advised users to install the Vertex Explosion Fix mod, which is crucial for eliminating visual artifacts such as stretched or misplaced polygons. Although this mod disables the option to customize the character's face at the start of the game, it effectively resolves these visual issues. Importantly, no other essential mods are needed, as the emulator itself comes with built-in enhancements. These can be accessed through a special menu, allowing users to enable 60 fps support, increase the resolution to 4K, or turn off chromatic aberration.
Despite experiencing occasional stutters, Morgan observed that Bloodborne generally maintained a 60 fps frame rate. He also experimented with higher resolutions, specifically 1440p and 1800p, which enhanced image detail but led to performance drops and frequent crashes. Consequently, Morgan recommends playing Bloodborne on the ShadPS4 emulator at either 1080p, mirroring the PS4's native resolution, or at 1152p for optimal performance.
Morgan praised the ShadPS4 team's remarkable achievement in making PS4 emulation possible. He concluded that while Bloodborne runs well on the emulator, it still faces some technical challenges.
