Digital Foundry's Thomas Morgan conducted a thorough review of Bloodborne using the ShadPS4 emulator, focusing on the game's performance and the enhancements introduced by the modding community. For his tests, Morgan utilized the ShadPS4 0.5.1 build developed by diegolix29, which is based on a custom branch created by raphaelthegreat. This specific build was chosen for its superior performance on a PC equipped with an AMD Ryzen 7 5700X processor and a GeForce RTX 4080 GPU.
To enhance the visual experience and address issues, Morgan recommended the installation of the Vertex Explosion Fix mod. This mod helps eliminate visual artifacts such as stretched or misplaced polygons, although it disables the character's face customization option at the start of the game. Importantly, no other essential mods are needed as the emulator already incorporates various enhancements, accessible through a special menu. This menu allows users to enable features like 60 fps support, increase the resolution to 4K, or turn off chromatic aberration.
During testing, Morgan observed that Bloodborne generally maintained a 60 fps frame rate, despite occasional stutters. He also experimented with higher resolutions, specifically 1440p and 1800p, noting a significant improvement in image detail but at the cost of performance stability and increased crash frequency. Consequently, Morgan advises running Bloodborne on the ShadPS4 emulator at 1080p or 1152p for the best balance between performance and visual quality.
Morgan praised the ShadPS4 team for their remarkable achievement in making PS4 emulation possible. While acknowledging that Bloodborne runs impressively on the emulator, he pointed out that it still faces some technical challenges.
