Square Enix's first attempt at the Soulslike genre, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, has seen a few problems since release, due primarily to performance issues on PC and console. Dipping frame rates and hindered resolutions have lead some fans to dig into the data for Stranger of Paradise's protagonist and side characters to find a likely cause for these performance problems.Through the work of several dataminers, including Twitter users AkiraJkr1 and DeathChaos25, players have found that it's the finer details on many character models that cause the performance issues. The result is that players can interestingly make Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin run a little smoother by implementing a simple change in these models: removing their hair. What these dataminers have found is that while the character models in Stranger of Paradise have an impressive amount of detail to them, they are apparently overly designed. One example shows that the Minister from the early moments of the game can drop the frame rate for a PC using a RTX 3090 down to 25 FPS thanks to the details in his fur coat. Essentially, both the default models and the ability to customize Stranger of Paradise's characters can hinder the performance of the game depending on how many extra bells and whistles an outfit has.
One solution that PC players have found is to remove the physics and models for hair and fur, drastically lowering the processing power needed to render each character as the game runs. So, keeping Stranger of Paradise's Jack and his companions bald can improve the performance and stop the frequent frame rate drops that some players have been reporting. Additionally, this negative effect appears to extend beyond the main characters and onto even basic enemies, some of which have bodies rendered under their clothing and complex designs with fangs, fur, and scales.
The result of all of these tests and deep dives into the data shows that while Stranger of Paradise was ambitious with character designs and the limits of the game engine, it may have gone too far in some cases. This means that even players who can meet the PC requirements for Stranger of Paradise are often fighting an uphill battle with the game's performance. Some of these issues could be fixed through patching the game down the line and optimizing the rendering of some character models, but for now the best option for some players may be to run around with bald warriors of light.
Stranger of Paradise is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.