Digital Foundry's Thomas Morgan recently conducted a thorough evaluation of Bloodborne on the ShadPS4 emulator, focusing on the game's performance and the technical enhancements introduced by modders. For his tests, Morgan utilized 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 most promising results on a PC equipped with an AMD Ryzen 7 5700X processor and a GeForce RTX 4080 GPU.

To enhance the gaming experience, Morgan suggested installing the Vertex Explosion Fix mod, which effectively eliminates visual artifacts such as stretched or mispositioned polygons. While this mod disables the option to customize the character's face at the start of the game, it significantly improves visual stability. Fortunately, no other essential mods are necessary, as the emulator itself comes with built-in enhancements. These can be accessed through a special menu, allowing players to enable 60 fps support, increase the resolution up to 4K, or turn off chromatic aberration.

During his tests, Morgan observed that Bloodborne generally maintained a smooth 60 fps, despite occasional stutters. He also experimented with higher resolutions, specifically 1440p and 1800p, which enhanced image detail but led to performance drops and frequent crashes. Consequently, Morgan recommends playing Bloodborne on the ShadPS4 emulator at either 1080p, mirroring the PS4's native resolution, or at 1152p for a slight improvement without compromising stability.

Morgan praised the ShadPS4 team for their remarkable achievement in making PS4 emulation possible. He concluded that while Bloodborne runs impressively well on the emulator, there are still some technical issues to be addressed.