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 modifications.

Morgan's evaluation utilized ShadPS4 build 0.5.1 by diegolix29, 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.

He strongly suggests installing the Vertex Explosion Fix mod. While this mod disables pre-game character face customization, it effectively eliminates distracting visual glitches manifested as distorted or misplaced polygons. No other mods are necessary; the emulator incorporates several performance enhancements accessible via an in-game menu. These options include 60fps support, resolution scaling up to 4K, and chromatic aberration toggling.

While occasional stuttering was observed, Morgan reported a mostly stable 60fps experience at 1080p. Experiments with 1440p and 1800p resolutions resulted in enhanced visual fidelity, but at the cost of significant performance drops and frequent crashes. Therefore, he recommends sticking to 1080p (native PS4 resolution) or 1152p for the best balance.

Morgan concluded that the very existence of playable 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.