Bloodborne can be emulated on PC with almost stable 60 fps

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 mods. For his tests, Morgan utilized ShadPS4 build 0.5.1 by diegolix29, based on raphaelthegreat's custom branch. After experimenting with various builds, this version proved optimal on his system—an AMD Ryzen 7 5700X processor paired with a GeForce RTX 4080 GPU.

Morgan strongly suggests installing the Vertex Explosion Fix mod. While this mod disables pre-game character face customization, it effectively eliminates distracting visual artifacts, such as stretched or misplaced polygons. No other significant mods are needed; the emulator itself incorporates a comprehensive menu for managing enhancements. This includes enabling 60fps support, resolution scaling up to 4K, and the option to disable chromatic aberration.

While occasional stutters were observed, Bloodborne maintained a mostly stable 60fps framerate during Morgan's testing. Experiments with higher resolutions (1440p and 1800p) yielded improved visual detail, but at the cost of significant performance drops and frequent crashes. Therefore, Morgan recommends sticking to 1080p (matching the PS4's native resolution) or 1152p for the best balance of performance and visuals.

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