Digital Foundry's Thomas Morgan conducted a thorough evaluation of Bloodborne on the ShadPS4 emulator, focusing on performance and mod-enhanced technical improvements. For his tests, Morgan utilized the ShadPS4 0.5.1 build by diegolix29, derived from the custom branch by developer raphaelthegreat. This particular build delivered the most promising results on a PC equipped with an AMD Ryzen 7 5700X processor and a GeForce RTX 4080 GPU.
To address visual artifacts, such as stretched or mispositioned polygons, Morgan advised installing the Vertex Explosion Fix mod. While this mod disables facial customization at the start of the game, it effectively resolves these visual issues. Importantly, no other mods are necessary as the emulator itself integrates all required enhancements. Users can access a dedicated menu to activate features like 60 fps support, resolution scaling up to 4K, and the option to turn off chromatic aberration.
Morgan observed that Bloodborne generally maintained a 60 fps frame rate, despite occasional stutters. He also experimented with higher resolutions, specifically 1440p and 1800p, which enhanced image quality but resulted in performance dips and more frequent crashes. Consequently, Morgan suggests sticking to 1080p or 1152p for optimal gameplay on ShadPS4.
Morgan praised the ShadPS4 team's remarkable achievement in enabling PS4 emulation, noting that while Bloodborne runs well on the emulator, it still encounters some technical challenges.
