Bloodborne, the PlayStation 4 exclusive that PC players have been asking for for more than a decade, can be played on PC without an emulator with a free port that runs on Windows, Linux and Steam Deck. The project is called bbport, was started by developer deadinside28 and this week it received its Windows 1.0 version led by Supermedo, who added a launcher with menus to configure the game without touching files and made it ready for download from GitHub.
The novelty compared to what existed is important, because until now the only way to play it on a computer was with a PS4 emulator, as happened when Bloodborne surpassed 4K at 60 FPS on PC, a method that requires powerful hardware and often brings graphical errors. This port follows another path, as it converts the game’s program into a native computer program before starting it, which allows it to run directly on the PC’s processor and break the 30 frames per second cap that the FromSoftware title has kept on console since its 2015 release.
What improvements does Bloodborne bring on PC
The most anticipated change is fluidity, since the port offers modes of 60 and 90 FPS and the option to remove the cap altogether, something that PlayStation never enabled even on PS5. Added to that is image upscaling with FSR 3.1 and FSR 4, AMD’s technology that renders the image at a lower resolution and improves performance without losing sharpness, along with an in-game menu to adjust resolution, focus and graphical effects.
The port also supports mods and community patches, includes a free camera to roam the environments and has a version prepared for Steam Deck, while its launcher is available in 13 languages. The main drawback is that it does not work with a mouse, according to DSOGaming, so you must play with a controller.
En qué se diferencia Bloodborne en este port de un emulador
The difference with shadPS4, the PS4 emulator most used for this game, lies in the approach, since the emulator seeks to be compatible with many titles and for this reason imitates much of the console’s system, while bbport was made exclusively for Bloodborne and only includes the features that that game needs to boot. To render the image it reuses the graphics core of shadPS4 with about 200 of its own modifications, but changes the way the work is distributed, because in the emulator all graphical commands pass through a single processor thread, which is the main bottleneck of the game, and in the port they are distributed among multiple threads, which allows better utilization of current CPUs and explains why it works even on a Steam Deck.
How to install Bloodborne on PC
The port is downloaded for free from the Bloodborne for PC repository on GitHub, but it does not include the game, so each user must provide their own PS4 Bloodborne copy, extracted from their console and updated to version 1.09, which is the only one compatible with the 60 and 90 FPS modes. With that copy on hand, the installation is summarized in these steps.
- Download the Bloodborne-Windows.zip file from the Releases section of the repository.
- Extract the file to any folder on the computer.
- Open the Bloodborne.exe program, which is the port’s launcher.
- Select the game’s folder from the launcher’s Game and Effects menu, which should be the one containing the copy’s eboot.bin file.
- Adjust in the same launcher the frames per second, the resolution and the image scaling.
- Press the Play button to start the game.
- Use the shortcut named Play Bloodborne.exe on subsequent launches, which opens the game without going through the launcher.
During gameplay, the port’s settings menu opens with the Insert key or by simultaneously pressing the two sticks on the controller, and saved games remain in a folder called user, next to the program.
What kind of computer is needed for Bloodborne
The port requires 64-bit Windows 10 or Windows 11, a graphics card compatible with Vulkan 1.3 with up-to-date drivers and at least 6 GB of available memory, a figure that rises to 10 GB for playing at 1440p or 4K. Its author notes that the version was tested with a high-end graphics card, so performance on more modest systems may vary, and with copies of the game other than 1.09 the port runs, but limited to 30 FPS.