Bloodborne PC Emulation Breakthrough: Near-Flawless Gameplay at 60 FPS

Digital Foundry's Thomas Morgan recently put Bloodborne through its paces on 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 based on raphaelthegreat's custom branch. After testing multiple builds, this version yielded the best 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 necessary; the emulator incorporates a comprehensive menu for managing various performance enhancements, including 60fps support, resolutions up to 4K, and chromatic aberration toggles.

While occasional stutters were observed, Bloodborne maintained a largely stable 60fps framerate. Experiments with higher resolutions (1440p and 1800p) resulted in improved visual fidelity but came at the cost of performance and increased instability, leading to frequent crashes. Therefore, Morgan recommends sticking to 1080p (native PS4 resolution) or 1152p for optimal gameplay.

Morgan concluded that the very possibility of PS4 emulation, particularly for a demanding title like Bloodborne, is a remarkable feat by the ShadPS4 team. While acknowledging remaining technical imperfections, he deemed the emulator's performance impressive.