Digital Foundry's Thomas Morgan conducted a thorough evaluation of Bloodborne on the ShadPS4 emulator, focusing on the performance enhancements achieved through modding. For his tests, Morgan utilized the ShadPS4 0.5.1 build developed by diegolix29, which is based on a custom branch by raphaelthegreat. This build was selected after testing various versions, proving optimal on a PC equipped with an AMD Ryzen 7 5700X processor and a GeForce RTX 4080 GPU.

To address visual glitches such as stretched or misplaced polygons, Morgan recommended the installation of the Vertex Explosion Fix mod. While this mod disables facial customization at the start of the game, it effectively eliminates these visual artifacts. Notably, no additional mods are necessary as the emulator already integrates a menu for managing enhancements, including enabling 60 fps support, scaling resolution up to 4K, and turning off chromatic aberration.

Morgan observed that Bloodborne generally maintained a 60 fps performance, though it experienced occasional stuttering. He also experimented with higher resolutions, specifically 1440p and 1800p, which enhanced image quality but resulted in performance degradation and frequent crashes. Consequently, he advises running the game at 1080p or 1152p on ShadPS4 for the best balance between performance and stability.

In his concluding remarks, Morgan praised the ShadPS4 team's remarkable progress in PS4 emulation, noting that while Bloodborne performs well on the emulator, some technical challenges remain.