It turns out hair and fur textures absolutely tank performance, with Twitter user AkiraJkr reporting frame rates as low as 8FPS (thanks, PC Gamer).
Fortunately, modders have found a way to mitigate the issue, albeit in a rather drastic way.
Reddit user MorrisonGamer has adapted a tool to toggle shaders on or off to improve performance, including one to make everyone in the game bald.
If you can tolerate the hair loss, you’ll be compensated with a considerable gain in framerate.
It should be noted that hairy characters are one of many causes of the game’s performance woes. MorrisonGamer writes that particles from Soul Bursting can also destroy performance: “Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin has been an actual monster in terms of performance.”
These issues aren’t limited to PC either, with MorrisonGamer deducing that the same intensive game models were also shipped on console versions of the game.
“Baffling writing aside, default story difficulty makes this the breeziest Soulslike ever, while combat still carries depth,” writes Alan Wen in Eurogamer’s review of the game.
