In a comprehensive review by Digital Foundry's Thomas Morgan, the performance of Bloodborne on the ShadPS4 emulator was thoroughly evaluated, highlighting the significant strides made by modders in enhancing the game's technical aspects. Morgan conducted his tests using the ShadPS4 0.5.1 build by diegolix29, which is based on 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.
To optimize the visual experience, Morgan suggested installing the Vertex Explosion Fix mod. This mod effectively removes visual artifacts, such as stretched or mispositioned polygons, although it does disable the ability to customize the character’s face at the start of the game. Fortunately, no other essential mods are necessary; the emulator itself is equipped with a special menu that allows users to activate various enhancements. These include enabling 60 fps support, boosting the resolution up to 4K, or turning off chromatic aberration.
Morgan's testing revealed that Bloodborne typically maintained a smooth 60 fps, despite occasional stutters. He also experimented with higher resolutions, such as 1440p and 1800p, which, while enhancing image detail, led to performance degradation and frequent crashes. Consequently, Morgan advises running Bloodborne on the ShadPS4 emulator at 1080p, mirroring the original PS4 resolution, or slightly higher at 1152p for the best balance of performance and visual quality.
The successful emulation of PS4 games, as demonstrated by the ShadPS4 team's work on Bloodborne, is a testament to their remarkable achievements. Morgan concluded that while the game runs impressively on the emulator, there are still some technical issues to be addressed.
