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, a build 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 bugs. No other mods are strictly necessary; the emulator incorporates a comprehensive menu for managing various performance enhancements, including 60fps support, resolutions up to 4K, and chromatic aberration toggling.

While occasional stuttering was observed, Morgan reported that Bloodborne maintained a mostly stable 60fps framerate. Experiments with higher resolutions (1440p and 1800p) resulted in enhanced visual fidelity but introduced performance drops and frequent crashes. Consequently, Morgan recommends sticking to 1080p (native PS4 resolution) or 1152p for the best balance of performance and visuals.

Morgan concluded that the very feasibility of PS4 emulation for Bloodborne is a remarkable accomplishment by the ShadPS4 team. While acknowledging remaining technical imperfections, he deemed the emulator's performance with Bloodborne largely successful.