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, stemming from raphaelthegreat's custom branch. After testing various builds, he found this version yielded optimal results on his system (AMD Ryzen 7 5700X CPU and GeForce RTX 4080 GPU).
Morgan suggests installing the "Vertex Explosion Fix" mod to mitigate visual glitches manifesting as distorted or misplaced polygons. While this mod disables pre-game character face customization, it effectively resolves these graphical issues. No other mods are necessary; the emulator incorporates a built-in menu for managing performance enhancements, including 60fps support, resolutions up to 4K, and chromatic aberration toggles.
While occasional stutters were present, Morgan observed a largely stable 60fps framerate. Experiments with higher resolutions (1440p and 1800p) resulted in improved visuals but came at the cost of performance and increased instability, leading to frequent crashes. Therefore, he recommends playing at either the native PS4 resolution of 1080p or a slightly upscaled 1152p.
Morgan concluded that the very existence of functional PS4 emulation, as demonstrated by ShadPS4, is a remarkable feat. While acknowledging remaining technical imperfections, he praised Bloodborne's impressive performance within the emulator.
