
Digital Foundry's Thomas Morgan conducted an in-depth analysis of Bloodborne's performance on the ShadPS4 emulator, focusing on the technical enhancements achieved through modding. For his evaluation, Morgan utilized the ShadPS4 0.5.1 build developed by diegolix29, which is based on a custom branch by raphaelthegreat. This particular build was selected after testing various versions, as it offered the most stable performance on a system equipped with an AMD Ryzen 7 5700X processor and a GeForce RTX 4080 GPU.
To improve the visual experience, Morgan suggested the installation of the Vertex Explosion Fix mod. This mod addresses visual glitches characterized by stretched or erratically placed polygons, although it does disable the option to customize the character's face at the start of the game. Importantly, the ShadPS4 emulator itself comes equipped with built-in enhancements, negating the need for additional mods. These features can be accessed via a dedicated menu, allowing users to activate 60 fps support, boost resolution up to 4K, and turn off chromatic aberration.
In his testing, Morgan observed that Bloodborne typically maintained a 60 fps frame rate, with only occasional stuttering. He also experimented with higher resolutions, specifically 1440p and 1800p, noting a significant enhancement in image detail. However, these higher settings led to performance degradation and frequent crashes. Consequently, Morgan advised running Bloodborne at 1080p or 1152p on the ShadPS4 emulator, mirroring the original PS4 settings.
Morgan praised the ShadPS4 team for their groundbreaking work in making PS4 emulation feasible. He acknowledged that while Bloodborne performs well on the emulator, there remain some technical challenges to be addressed.