Bloodborne can be emulated on PC with almost stable 60 fps

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, this version yielded optimal results on his system—an AMD Ryzen 7 5700X CPU and a 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 issues. No other mods are strictly necessary; the emulator incorporates a comprehensive menu for managing performance enhancements. This includes options for 60fps gameplay, resolutions up to 4K, and chromatic aberration toggling.

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

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