Star Ocean The Last Hope 4K Full HD Remaster ...

Star Ocean: The Last Hope[8][a] is a 2009 action role-playing video game developed by tri-Ace and published by Square Enix for the Xbox 360, and the fourth installment in the Star Ocean series. Famitsu revealed that the battle system featured four party members, and was more team-oriented. The game also features more of a sci-fi emphasis than past titles with the ability to control your own ship. This ship is quite large, and is able to land on at least 5 planets or other space-based destinations. Players are able to travel through the "star ocean," jumping across planets.[9] The game takes place a few centuries before the original Star Ocean, and revolves around Edge and his crew combating a mysterious threat called the "Grigori".[10]

In the end, Star Ocean 4: The Last Hope brought me back to a time when I had to sit down and thoroughly shut myself out of the real world and immerse myself into this world -- more specifically the star ocean. Exploring space and discovering huge new worlds creates a great playing experience, and with this remastered version this game only looks even better. Even though a few years have passed, Star Ocean 4: The Last Hope is close to the same game I remember, but I appreciated the nostalgic reminder that games are challenging and autosave wasn't always a thing.

Star Ocean: The Last Hope 4K & Full HD Remaster was released digitally on November 28, 2017 for the PlayStation 4 and Steam. Developed in partnership with tri-Ace, it is a full HD remaster of the International version, with added 4K (PS4 Pro) support and PC keyboard, mouse, and controller support. The remastered title keeps the original deep Item Creation, Private Action, and Blindside battle systems. Those who purchased the game from the PlayStation Store before January 8, 2018, received an exclusive PlayStation 4 theme and twelve PlayStation Network avatars featuring the main characters.

Unlike other HD remasters, Star Ocean: The Last Hope is fully upscaled, and shows itself as a modern interpretation of the past, rather than a mask placed on a relic. The game has a sense of both classic and modern gameplay elements, and despite a rather bland battle system there is a lot to enjoy and explore across a vast sky of stars.

SummaryStar Ocean The Last Hope 4K & Full HD Remaster in my opinion is a great JRPG. While it has received a lot of negatives it has also been praised by many. It is a game that you may or may not like but this remaster has made some of the more annoying issues that people have found less of one and hopefully improving the experience for many. I myself have completed this game four times already and if I didn't have a good enough reason to not play through a fifth time well I definitely don't now.

Developed in partnership with tri-Ace, Star Ocean: The Last Hope place at the beginning of the Star Ocean series timeline and is a full HD remaster with added 4K support* and PC keyboard, mouse and controller support. The game takes players on an epic journey across the universe in an immersive, intergalactic story of survival where humanity must turn to the stars in search of a new home. Featuring strategic real-time combat, the remastered title also keeps the original deep Item Creation System and Private Action system that explores character relationships and subplots for a richer and more rewarding story, and exhilarating Blindside battle system, which fuses evasion and offense.

Star Ocean - The Last Hope is releasing on Steam on November 28, 2017 and will be in 4K and full HD. Be ready to play this action-packed RPG by having at least an Intel Core i3-2100 or AMD A8-6500 for your CPU. Fight through the battle of mankind's last stand in the aftermath of World War III. Venture into the galaxy and discover new alien races that will become your allies or maybe even your enemies.

For decades now, console gaming has traditionally focused on delivering a specific experience for each platform, tailored by the developer. Sure, we've seen high frame-rate modes and occasional toggles between different presets but nothing like the kind of full suite of options found in a typical PC game... until now. That's exactly what developer Tri-Ace has delivered with its PlayStation 4 remaster of Star Ocean: The Last Hope. Every aspect of the game available for tweaking on PC is available to PlayStation owners, but is that actually a good thing?

With this remaster of its original PS3 and Xbox 360 RPG, Tri-Ace promises resolutions up to a native 4K on PS4 Pro, while the base system targets 1080p instead. In all cases, the target is now a full 60 frames per second for all aspects of the game - assuming you get your settings right, of course. Previously, Star Ocean's world exploration and cut-scenes were capped at 30fps on Xbox 360 and PS3 while battle sequences were instead updated at 60fps, albeit with plenty of slowdown.

While many of the assets are very much the same as the last-gen versions, the extra clarity has a transformative effect on the game, enabling a much more attractive image. On Xbox 360, the reliance on overdone specular resulted in plenty of visible shimmering and image noise but this remaster comes much closer to delivering a pristine image, and running at native 4K on Pro is clearly the best option - but that's not where Star Ocean's selectables end.

All told, none of these settings hugely impact the overall visual quality but there are certainly minor improvements to be had, and the leap over the last-gen original is massive. But the question is, to what extent do these choices make an impact on the gameplay? On PS4 Pro at native 4K, initial impressions are great and the game hums along at 60fps without a problem, but once you start exploring it immediately becomes apparent that frame-rates just aren't stable enough. Thanks to a double buffer v-sync, performance fluctuates wildly depending on load, resulting in a jerky experience. Pop into the options and change some settings though, and you can start to put things back on track.

Unfortunately, this proves to be the real hurdle with the native 4K mode - no matter how you adjust the options, blindsiding enemies always results in huge performance drops. It's not unplayable but it sure doesn't look nice. So, the option for native 4K is there, but those in search of stable performance will want to stick with 1440p. And that's actually a shame: if the developers had applied the depth of field setting to its application throughout the game, we'd be good to go with a full-on 4K60 remaster here. Unfortunately, as things stand, the only way forward for a consistent experience is to drop to 1440p - but even there, a few isolated drops remain and only 1080p can keep things fully locked.

Seeing a full suite of graphical options on a console title is as fascinating as we had hoped it would be but in the end, it doesn't add that much to the package. What's missing is a properly frame-paced 30fps option that would allow us to run at full 4K with all bling engaged. Or alternatively, the developers could have tried using its own settings to hit a locked 4K60 in their own game - they would have undoubtedly encountered the blindside depth of field bug as quickly as we did and brought about a fix.

And therein lies the problem with this Star Ocean 4 remaster. As nice as a full options screen is to the core user, there's still not enough granularity here to get the best experience for those that do know what they are doing. Meanwhile, we're not entirely comfortable with the idea of casual users grappling with - or even understanding - what half of the options on offer here actually do. At this point, you can't help but feel that properly curated presets with guaranteed performance levels would have been much more helpful. 781b155fdc