Bloodborne PC Emulation: Near-Perfect 60FPS Achieved

Digital Foundry's Thomas Morgan recently put Bloodborne through its paces on the ShadPS4 emulator, meticulously evaluating its performance and the impact of community-created enhancements. For his tests, Morgan utilized ShadPS4 build 0.5.1 by diegolix29, a build based on raphaelthegreat's custom branch, selected after testing various versions for optimal performance on his AMD Ryzen 7 5700X and GeForce RTX 4080 system.

He strongly suggests installing the Vertex Explosion Fix mod. While this mod disables pre-game character face customization, it effectively eliminates distracting visual artifacts—stretched or misaligned polygons—significantly improving the overall visual experience. No other mods are necessary; the emulator itself incorporates a comprehensive menu allowing adjustments such as 60fps support, resolutions up to 4K, and chromatic aberration toggling.

While occasional stutters were present, Morgan found Bloodborne maintained a largely stable 60fps framerate. Experiments with higher resolutions (1440p and 1800p) yielded improved visual detail, but at the cost of significant performance drops and frequent crashes. Consequently, he recommends playing at either the native PS4 resolution of 1080p, or a slightly upscaled 1152p for a balance of visual fidelity and stability.

Morgan concluded that the very existence of playable PS4 emulation for Bloodborne is a remarkable feat by the ShadPS4 team. While acknowledging remaining technical imperfections, he deemed the emulator's performance impressive, delivering a largely enjoyable experience.