Star Ocean: The Second Story In‐Depth Gameplay Analysis - RetroAchievements/guides GitHub Wiki

IN-DEPTH GAMEPLAY ANALYSIS

If you’re more accustomed to the game’s mechanics but need more specific information, this is where I start doing a deeper dive. I don’t expect you to read the whole thing in one sitting. Just read up on a specific topic if you’re having trouble with something. Do take some notes however, because it’s hard to memorize everything. I will be linking a lot of resources available from RPG Shrines since they have loads of documentation that I couldn’t even begin to describe here.

This is where I go over what you would want to know to fully and comprehensively understand how Second Story is meant to be enjoyed. Of any JRPG I’ve played, this is hands down one of the most complex I’ve ever seen. It is simple in practice, but takes a lot of time to master the ins and outs of everything. If all of this is overwhelming to you, just read up on a specific topic you want to know, then go back to the game and put it to practice. Bit by bit, you’ll build up the skills and knowledge to understand this game.

BASIC COMBAT MECHANICS

The Star Ocean series’ combat takes place in real time on a field, with your allies placed on one side of the arena and the enemies on the other. Your allies are divided into two types: fighter and mage. Rena, Celine, Leon and Noel function as mages, while everyone else is a fighter. Oddly, Noel is unique in that while he is a mage, he is able to equip Medium Armor the same way characters like Opera, Precis, Bowman and Chisato can, which classifies him as a fighter in-game. The other three mages can only equip Light Armor and Magician’s Armor.

The mages each have their own lists of spells and elements that they specialize in. For the fighters, they use Killer Moves (or “moves” as I refer to them), which you can assign one of each to L1 and R1 for the character you’re controlling. Not all moves are created equal – some are top tier, while others are a complete waste of time. Both moves and spells can become more powerful and efficient by increasing their Proficiency level, simply by using said abilities over and over again in combat.

Changing Controlled Characters

To assign which character you want to control in the camp menu, go to Combat -> Replacement and assign them to the top-most slot of your party members. Changing your controlled character while in combat is not as intuitive. If your character falls in battle and you want to use someone else to throw a Resurrection Bottle at them, you need to follow some steps. First, enter a battle and gain control (the hourglass in the very top right corner needs to be blue). Hit the Circle button, and a white triangle will appear beneath the characters’ names. Now you can select which character you want to use, even going directly into their battle menu if they’re not doing anything. To return to your previous character, just repeat the previous steps. This can feel a bit cumbersome at first, but you’ll get used to it with enough practice.

Item and Magic Usage

If you want to use items or magic, a character must be either standing still or running around without a command assigned to them. If they’re in the middle of executing a move or casting a spell, you have to wait for the animation to complete. Items and magic have their own cooldown times, with items indicated by the bar next to the hourglass at the top right corner of the screen, and spells indicated by a bar that goes down just in front of the caster. While moves can be assigned to the R1 and L1 buttons, spells cannot be assigned like this. You need to select them from the menu constantly, which I find to be one of the biggest drawbacks of this game’s combat system.

Elements

I won’t go into too much detail about elements, especially considering there are a whopping 10 elements to keep track of in Second Story: Fire, Water, Wind, Earth, Thunder, Light, Darkness, Star, Vacuum, and Void. Healing magic is not assigned an element. Furthermore, Second Evolution drops the Star, Vacuum and Void elements, and changes around a bunch of spells. Since I haven’t played that version yet at the time of writing this, I’ll leave that research to you.

In Second Story, spells can also be combined to achieve either an Absorption, Cancellation, or Reflection effect. I don’t bother with this too much since the two spells need to be cast at the exact same time and need to meet certain elemental criteria, and it just doesn’t happen often enough to be worth the trouble. You can read the Star Ocean Wiki article on the subject if you want to know more.

Status Effects

There are some status effects, both positive and negative, that occur only in battle and will vanish once it ends. There are three particular statuses that persist after the battle ends however (if you don’t count KO’ed as one of them). These are Poison, Paralysis, and Stone. Poison is the least deadly of these, and is easy to heal. Paralysis and Stone are much scarier because they fully immobilize the victim, and must be healed as soon as possible. If you get a combination of Paralyzed and/or Petrified and/or KO’ed characters all at once, it will result in a Game Over. Stone will also not be removed when you rest at an inn. Rena and Noel will learn a spell called Dispel that removes these statuses as well.

Character Status

The playable characters have seven different stats that can be boosted through equipment, leveling in battle, and investing Skill Points into specific skills. Some of these are intuitive enough, but others like Stamina and Guts might not be. This is copied directly from the Star Ocean Wiki, with adapted text for Guts.

  • STR - The character's innate physical Strength and affects the ATK value.
  • INT - Intelligence affects the MAG (or Magic) value.
  • CON - The character's Constitution; it affects the DEF value. A higher DEF means less damage received; it is also called AC (Armor Class).
  • DEX - A character's innate Dexterity; it affects the HIT value. This value determines a character's hit accuracy, and higher HIT means that attacks connect more often.
  • AGL - Innate Agility, it affects the AVD (Avoidance) rate, called GRD in most other games.
  • STM - A character's Stamina affects how much HP and MP they recover after battle. Stamina goes down if one attacks or uses spells in battle, and can recover itself by remaining still. It can be raised or lowered by equipment.
  • GUTS - While fighting, you will notice the word GUTS pop up in blue text. This is a beneficial effect for your allies that does two different things: increases your chance of landing a critical hit more than the separate CRIT stat does, and can protect a character if they take mortal damage, allowing them to survive with 1 HP.

CHARACTER RECRUITMENT

Before you can really do much, you’re going to need party members. The trouble is that there are certain arbitrary rules that will lock you out of recruiting particular characters depending on the choices you make. I’ll outline what those rules are per character, but this is why I strongly suggest you keep multiple save files, with two ‘seed’ files for your chosen hero starting with after you get the Ancient Writings in Cross Cave during the expedition with Celine. One file will be you choosing to keep her, while the other is ditching her. These can be updated after finishing the story events in Mars Village. Since you’d want to do this for both Claude and Rena’s routes, that’s four saves right there.

You have an impressive range of how to customize your final battle party, all on top of choosing either Claude or Rena at the start. You also need to keep these saves separate so that the Voice Collection can read all of the files and compile the voice clips you’ve unlocked. If you overwrite a save, you’ll lose those particular clips. Keep track of what each save is for so you don’t lose progress.

Including Claude and Rena who are mandatory party members, you have 12 characters to choose from. You could loosely say that two of them are a one package deal, but I’ll explain that in a bit. I’ll be going by order you can meet them during the story, so expect heavy spoilers. I won’t explain Claude and Rena’s utility as combat characters, since they’re good at what they do. Claude is a potent fighter with some excellent moves, and Rena’s only job is to heal, although she can get some damage in if she wants. Due to story reasons, she is the only Expellian capable of healing magic anyway, so her role is essential. You have the option of recruiting a second healer near the beginning of Disc 2, but it takes quite a while to reach that point, and his Strategy settings don’t really allow him to efficiently heal the way Rena can.

Before I forget, I should mention that everyone has a favorite food (except for Chisato in the PS1 version) and a favorite instrument. A character consuming their favorite food allows them to heal their HP and MP depending on how much SP is invested into the Recipe skill, so have plenty of said food on hand for easy healing. This will be necessary to know for the achievement Delicious Tastes. Likewise, a character’s favorite instrument will enhance the effects of a song that uses said instrument, and is used in Cave of Trials’ level 4 for a mini-trial. If a character tries to play a song and it sounds off-key, it’s because that character is missing the Talents for Pitch and/or Sense of Rhythm.

Claude’s favorite food is Steak and his favorite instrument is the Silver Trumpet (defeat Gabriel Celesta in Cave of Trial’s 13th level, and she will reward you with this and a Holy Farwell).

Rena’s favorite food is Shortcake, and her favorite instrument is the Lyre.

Celine Jules: she automatically joins Claude and Rena’s group for the Cross Cave exploration, and there’s nothing you can do about it. After getting the Ancient Writings and backtracking to the entrance, this is when you can make the choice to either keep or ditch her. If you’re on Claude’s route and you ditch her, Celine will temporarily join him again during the events in Mars, but after that, she’s gone for good. Celine is a decent early game mage who specializes in fire, lightning and light magic. The most irritating thing is that spell animations take bloody forever to complete, so spells like Southern Cross and Explode will eat up a lot of your time. The plus side is that you have lots of time to build up her repertoire of spells, unlike with the other mages you acquire later. She’s also the only Expellian with no arbitrary recruitment rules attached to her. Unfortunately, Celine has a really annoying caveat involving the Talent for Love of Animals, so don’t use her for learning all of the Talents.

Celine’s favorite food is Baby Rabbit Risotto, and her favorite instrument is the Violin.

Ashton Anchors: after the events in Mars, you need to learn about the dragon in Salva Cave in Hilton, then backtrack to Salva and agree to look for the swordsman who went further in. You will find Ashton fighting the two-headed dragon, who unexpectedly fuses to Ashton’s body as two dragon heads protruding from his back. You actually have the choice of fleeing or taking responsibility for this mishap. Fleeing and immediately returning to Ashton dramatically drops your Affinity with him, but he’ll still come along. Complete the side quest to help him exorcise the dragons, and he’ll join the party for good. If you recruit Ashton, you cannot recruit Opera and Ernest.

Ashton is a dual-handed swordsman who is widely considered to be one of the best fighters in the game among the likes of Dias and Opera, but it takes time for him to unlock this potential. His best ability is Sword Dance, learned at level 70. The biggest drawback is that some of his moves take time to execute, allowing enemies to get out of the way. If you’re playing as Claude and you don’t choose Opera, Ashton is your go-to guy for heavy damage since you can’t recruit Dias in Claude’s route. The only other option for a good fighter in this scenario is Chisato, but you get her way too late in the game for her to be worthwhile.

Ashton’s favorite food is Hamburger, and his favorite instrument is the Piano.

Opera Vectra: first of all, it is required to do a certain PA in Cross City where the hero meets a strange man with three eyes running by. Once you finish the Lacour Arms Tournament, go to Hilton and go to the pub to find her (don’t do a PA). The hero will inform her of meeting the three-eyed man , and she runs off. Go to Cross City, have an audience with the king, and learn where Opera went to. He will give the party permission to go to the Mountain Palace. It is located on a slope near Clik. Go inside and look for Opera, then fight the Fire Lizard x2 boss and find a clue about Ernest being here. Before meeting Ernest at Hoffmann Ruins, you have to do a PA in Arlia where Opera is standing on the Elder's balcony saying she crash-landed in the Shingo Forest, exit and re-enter normally, then go into Shingo Forest to trigger another cutscene that shows Opera's spaceship.

Opera sticks with the party, but she isn’t quite a permanent addition yet. There’s a weird caveat where if you find Ernest at Hoffman Ruins and decide not to take him, Opera will then boot herself out of the party and take off with Ernest. Likewise, if you neglect to recruit Ernest and carry on with the story, Opera will stay, but her Affinity will dramatically decrease. As you would want Ernest to tag along for his voice clips and Battle Suit steals, recruit him to keep Opera happy with you. If the two of them leave however, this opens up the chance for you to go get Ashton. If you recruit Opera (regardless of what you do with Ernest), you cannot recruit Ashton.

Opera is an amazing fighter, but does have some problems bogging her down. Her attack animations are very fast, and she has ranged moves that can hit multiple times. She also has a variety of elemental moves, and the move Alpha on One is just busted due to it being a multi-bullet homing attack. A quirk with Opera is that three of her moves require her to craft items in Machinery to unlock them, specifically Laser Bit, Healing Star and Hyper Launcher. Healing Star is unlocked with the White System item, Laser Bit with Black System, and Hyper Launcher with Green System, all of which are very rare to create. Precis also shares this same quirk, so if you have both of them in your party, expect to burn through loads of money for Material Kits.

Since Disc 1 takes place on an underdeveloped planet, no shops will sell better weapons for Opera’s futuristic gun, meaning she needs to craft them through Machinery and Customize. Even on Energy Nede, which is supposed to be much more futuristic than Expel, only one shop in Armlock sells a weapon for her. Her best weapon, the Psycho Box, is only available from the Fun City Duel Battle Rank A. If you’re on Rena’s route, Opera also needs to Customize a Seventh Ray (Light Box + Rainbow Diamond) for a PA in Herlie. A very complicated character to manage, doubly so if she’s with Precis, but her combat capabilities make the trouble worth it.

Opera’s favorite food is Apple Cider, and her favorite instrument is the Piano.

Precis F. Neumann: you can potentially recruit her if you do her events in Linga before initiating the Lacour Arms Tournament storyline, allowing you to see some small bits of extra dialogue from her. Otherwise, you can wait until after when the story takes you there. Precis has good range with her attacks, but does have some startup and cooldown animations to worry about. Some of her better skills include Rocket Punch, Ally-Oop!, Parabola Beam and Bloody Mary. Precis shares the same quirk as Opera in that some of her moves require her making items in Machinery to acquire them, specifically for Mujin Super Beam and Barrier. There’s also a PA in Fun City between Precis and Ashton that lets her unlock the move Holo-holograph, and only if he’s learned Sword Dance at level 70.

Like Opera, Precis must also make weapons for herself since no shops sell them on Expel, and only Armlock’s shop has something for her in Disc 2. Precis’ weapons aren’t quite as difficult to upgrade throughout Disc 1 as Opera’s without Machinery and Customize however, since there’s a weapon in a chest in Sanctuary of Linga, and she can get another weapon in the Lacour Front Lines. If you recruit Precis, you cannot recruit Bowman.

Precis’ favorite food is Chocolate Crepes, and her favorite instrument is the Harmonica.

Bowman Jean: before initiating the story events involving Bowman and the Sanctuary of Linga, you have the option of recruiting Precis before ever being able to recruit Bowman. If you want him, you have to ignore her and speak to him in his store to advance the plot. Return with your rare herb, and then Bowman will ask to join the party. Accept, and he’ll have a scene with his wife before you’re able to depart. If you recruit Bowman, you cannot recruit Precis.

If you don’t know how to use Bowman correctly, then he is fairly average. His regular physical attack is the absolute worst of the entire cast, being way too short to be useful. Rena’s regular attack is many times better than Bowman’s, and she’s not supposed to be the dedicated martial artist. His real potential comes with the move Poison Pills. This alone turns him into an absolute beast, since it comes out fast and can hit multiple times with higher Proficiency levels. Secret Medicine is also all right if you want him to be self-sufficient in solo battles. Although Dias, Opera and Ashton are celebrated as high-tier fighters, don’t pass up on Bowman if you don’t have any of those characters or want to experiment with your roster.

Bowman’s favorite food is Daikon Miso Soup, and his favorite instrument is the Harmonica.

Ernest Raviede: Opera’s boyfriend, whom she is searching all over Expel for. As mentioned in her section, you need to see the PA in Cross City involving Ernest before initiating the search with her. Opera is also mandatory to be in your party so you can recruit Ernest at Hoffman Ruins. If you choose not to take Ernest with you, Opera will leave the party and take off with him. This does open up the possibility to get Ashton though. You could say that Opera and Ernest are a two-for-one deal the same way Claude and Rena are at the start of the game. If Ernest does have one practical use, it’s stealing two Battle Suits off of him during PAs. If you recruit Opera and Ernest, you cannot recruit Ashton.

Ernest’s combat abilities are horrendous, and that’s being generous. Even after the many times I played this game, I never really used him much. His regular attack is so slow that Opera could get three blows in before Ernest gets his one off. Of his moves, stick to Thousand Whips, Thunder Whip, or Sonic Whip. He has one of the most pointless moves in the entire game, Cloud Dust, which just increases his dodge ability. Not worth spending one of your valuable Killer Move slots for.

Ernest’s favorite food is Hassaku Tea, and his favorite instrument is the Cembalo.

Dias Flac: Rena’s childhood friend, who had run off to become a stronger swordsman after losing his family in a bandit attack. Dias is only available for recruitment in Rena’s route. If you’re on her route, you’ll get the option to recruit Dias at the Lacour Front Lines. He’s a top-tier swordsman in battle, as his attack animations are quick and fluid. He does have some drawbacks though, other than being tied to Rena’s story. If you try to have him equip a Meteor Ring or Slayer’s Ring for extra attacks, it won’t do anything due to the unique nature of his iai-styled attack animation. Of course, you’d be stupid to use Dias for normal attacks when you have moves like Air Slash, Crescent Wave and Illusion. A non-combat caveat to Dias however is that he doesn’t have any PAs whatsoever, so you need to use other methods to manage his Affinity.

Dias’ favorite food is Chicken Skewers, and his favorite instrument is the Cembalo.

Leon D. S. Geeste: a bratty child genius who must tag along with the party during the Hoffmann Ruins segment. Leon is only available for recruitment in Claude’s route. If you’re on his route, you’ll get the option to recruit Leon in the Eluria settlement. Leon also only has two PAs in Disc 2 to affect his Affinity, making him have the absolute fewest of your party members.

If Dias is top tier, then Leon is probably middle tier in comparison. Leon is a spellcaster like Celine, with his niche being ice, darkness and void-elemental spells. Of the many times I used him, nothing really stuck out to me with his spells. He needs some time to acquire AoE spells to catch up with Celine, but he will come into his own eventually. Because of Leon’s recruitment, I suggest doing Claude’s route on Earth difficulty, then do Rena’s on Universe so you can get Dias. A benefit to Leon is that he can learn every Talent.

Leon’s favorite food is Carrot Juice, and his favorite instrument is the Violin.

Noel Chandler: a nature-loving pacifist who is the keeper of the Preserve on Energy Nede. Noel doesn’t have any special recruitment rules other than having a slot available for him, which you most likely will. The option to recruit him will happen automatically during the story when you get the Synard. Noel, for lack of a better word, SUCKS. He’s even worse than Ernest, and you’d have to be trying really hard to reach that benchmark. Noel tries to be both a healer and an offensive mage, but is terrible at both. Rena’s healing is much better, and both Celine and Leon have developed their repertoire of spells enough that you wouldn’t want to bother doing so for Noel all over again when you’re so late into the game. Hell, Noel doesn't even learn Raise Dead, a staple spell for any healer!

His only niche is that his offensive spells cover the missing elements like wind and earth, but big freakin’ whoop. His regular attack also stinks. The only role I see him covering is as a backup healer in case Rena can’t keep up in harder difficulties, but you’d want to actually control Noel. Why? His strategy options do not have “Recover friends only!”, meaning his AI will not prioritize healing. One minor benefit to recruiting Noel is that if you’re on Rena’s route, he is the only character who can learn every Talent.

Noel’s favorite food is Big Tuna, and his favorite instrument is the Illusive Shamisen (win over the Goddess with a party member’s musical skills in Cave of Trials level 4, and she will award this).

Chisato Madison: a reporter from Central City who follows the party to get the latest scoop, but screws up repeatedly. She can be recruited once you pick up her ID card in the Cave of Red Crystal and bring it back to her in Central City’s editorial office. She is the final possible party member to recruit, so you’re done building your party once you get her. Chisato is not the best fighter of the roster, but she does her job decently enough. The biggest issue I always had with her was how late her recruitment was, meaning I had little to no time to warm up to her as both a character and a fighter. After doing some grinding with her, I’ve found that her best moves are Burning Cards and Ten Thousand Volts for ranged attacks, and Rising Dragon for close-range fighting.

Chisato’s favorite food is dummied out in the PS1 version, but can be made in the PSP version – it is the Fruit Sandwich. Her favorite instrument is the Organ.

AFFINITY

For the achievement set, you’re going to want to understand how the Affinity mechanic (or Emotional Level in other versions) functions as a hidden value. This is so you can acquire the And They Lived Happily Ever After achievement, which requires getting a special ending involving the entire party. You are also required to recruit a full party of 8 characters for this to work. Any fewer than that, and you won’t get this ending.

The main sell of Star Ocean is the ability to witness small scenes between the protagonist and their companions when stopping by in a town. If Tales has Skits, then Star Ocean has Private Actions (PAs for short). Unlike with Skits, which are just pure flavor dialogue, PAs allow you to manipulate how close a hero is to their allies through a series of choices. This game uses two values; Friend Points (FP) and Romance Points (RP), together referred to as Affinity, and are assigned default values between ALL characters, not just between the hero and their allies. RPG Shrines has a table detailing what those default values are.

However, my personal opinion is that PAs are a lie for several reasons: the PAs only affect the main character’s Affinity with their allies, there are only so many PAs to rely upon, you can’t track Affinity levels in-game, and there are far more reliable ways of managing it anyway. Even so, you will want to watch a bunch of PAs for each hero’s route to unlock those achievements. You need to watch 35 for Claude, and 30 for Rena.

So what’s the point of all of this? Three reasons; voice clips, battle behaviors, and endings. There are voice clips tied to a character’s Affinity with another, not just with your hero. Boosting or lowering your chosen hero’s relationship with the others is easy, but for improving relationships between your allies, that’s going to be considerably harder since PAs are strictly limited to how the characters like your hero. With battle behaviors, characters will be more likely to protect/heal/buff those they have higher affinity with, and will get extremely angry if the other falls in battle, allowing you to unlock more voice clips. As for endings, you can pair two characters together to see a unique scene with them.

As tempting as it is to just be nice to everyone all the time during PAs, this isn’t always a good idea because you could potentially miss out on a PA if your values are incorrect or you make the wrong choice. An example is in Claude’s scenario with a PA in Cross’ church involving Rena. If Rena’s RP with him is 8 or lower, you will be able to see this PA. If it is 9 or higher, you will not. Get it down 1 point somehow, then return to Cross and you should be able to do it now. You would also want to be rude to your allies if your goal is to pair specific characters together.

The most frustrating aspect about this is that you cannot see what a character’s Affinity numbers are in the menu, or anywhere for that matter. The only way to check is to speak to a fortune teller in Fun City fairly late in the game, and even then her hints are vague at best. There are only so many PAs available before you run out, so you need other methods of manipulating Affinity. Thus, you’ll have to keep track of any increases or decreases in values yourself whenever you do PAs, and even then that’s only effective for managing your hero’s relationships with the others, not between the others themselves. You can see why this is such a rat’s nest to untangle, and why I don’t care for PAs to manage Affinity.

The absolute easiest method you can use to bypass this headache is through the Super Specialty skill Publishing. Every character can author two books; a common book that increases FP by 8, and a rare book that increases RP by 8. You can then have these books be sold in publishing offices found in Lacour and Central City so you don’t have to make them again and again. Have enough books on hand for every character to read everyone else’s FP and RP book to set everyone’s Affinity to a flat 8 all across the board. Once you reach the final save point in Fienal Tower before fighting the final boss, consume the books and fight with your desired party.

There are also six specific boss fights that increase FP of same sex characters and RP of opposite sex characters by 1. It affects only the characters you bring into the battle. Only two of these fights are on Expel, with the remaining four on Energy Nede. These are the battles in question:

  • Hoffman Ruins boss
  • Berle in Eluria Tower
  • Field of Power Boss
  • Field of Courage Boss
  • Berle in Armlock
  • Final Boss

Make sure not to be deceived by information from Second Story R. The remake allows you to make a save file after beating the final boss so you can access Virtual Reality Expel, and likewise farm Affinity points. Second Story does not let you do this. To unlock VR Expel, simply interact with the final save point before the final boss (you'll go up three sets of stairs afterward, so you know you've reached it). This sets a flag indicating you've gone through the rest of the story, allowing you to speak to the old man in Fun City's coliseum.

If you want to lower relationship values instead of raise them, the best ways are through Pickpocketing and the Super Specialty skill Reverse Side (known as Contraband in other versions). The former is helpful for lowering values between the hero and their allies, though be careful since you only get one chance to steal from any given NPC. The latter affects any and all party members. These fluctuations are unfortunately invisible and thus next to impossible to keep track of yourself unless you have access to the game’s memory.

VOICE COLLECTION

Now that you understand Affinity, I can dive into how the Voice Collection works. This is needed to unlock Universe Mode for the set, which requires you to discover 50% of the game's voice tracks from the playable characters plus a small handful of bosses. Consider this the precursor to Battle Trophies that were introduced in Star Ocean: Till the End of Time. It is impossible to actually get 100% of the entire collection due to some characters calling out names of characters they can never be partnered with, or someone casting a spell they don't have access to. You also can't get every clip in a single save file due to the character recruitment restrictions. Vary your party compositions so you can access as many of the clips as you can. Also, never EVER save over any given save file. The game reads the data from every save and compiles it in the Voice Collection. RPG Shrines has a list of all the voice clips so you can check what you have unlocked. The voices are divided into smaller categories that you can work on.

  1. Regular attacks
  2. Getting injured
  3. Leveling up
  4. Beginning a battle
  5. Finishing a battle
  6. Fleeing a battle (only unlocks for the party members in the first two slots of your active battle party. Swap around characters frequently if you're farming flees)
  7. Near death
  8. Death
  9. Ally death
  10. Aided by an ally
  11. Taunting an enemy
  12. Using a Killer Move
  13. Casting a spell

Of these, an ally death and casting spells are the hardest of them all to obtain. Affinity is needed for certain voice clips that involve one character dying, with another getting mad and calling out the fallen character's name. A method I use to get some of these is to buy a bunch of Wolfsbanes to inflict poison on an ally, then get into an easy battle just outside Arlia, use a Wolfsbane on three allies, and let them die from the poison ticks repeatedly while Rena casts Raise Dead to resurrect them (Noel doesn't have the spell). The poison status persists even after reviving, so you can farm deaths this way. Mandrakes will kill a character outright, so that's another item you can use. Set everyone's Strategy to "Do Nothing!" and be sure no one has Poison Checks equipped too.

Killer Moves only ever have one voice clip attached to them, but the vast majority of spells actually have two. One is a common clip, while the other is extraordinarily rare. I will implore you right here and now - don't waste your time trying to get the rare clips. They are so difficult to get that it would be a massive time sink when you could be spending your time doing more productive things. Hell, I did about 500+ casts of Heal with Rena, and I still didn't unlock the rare clip. That is one of the fastest spells to cast, so imagine trying to do it for spells with long animation times. Just let the rare clips unlock through natural gameplay, and focus on other categories to complete your voice collection.

SKILLS, TALENTS, AND SPECIALTIES

This is a pretty big section to cover, and it may be intimidating at first. Don’t worry too much about it at first. Discovering all of this was what hooked me to the game in the first place. There’s enough here to keep you plenty busy with pure gameplay, rather than just sitting through some long drawn-out narrative that you wished would end. You don’t have to understand all of the nitty gritty details right from the get-go. Just farm SP, dump them into skills, and watch your characters improve. If you’re stuck on something, come back here for a review.

Skills

To start off, every character is able to create or acquire items such as potions, food, weapons, armor, accessories, tools, and a bunch of other wacky miscellaneous stuff you wouldn’t think of. Draw portraits of your party members? Of course. Make a Master Chef meal out of seafood and fruit? No problem. Craft one of Claude’s greatest weapons halfway through Disc 1 and make him absolutely broken for a while? Go nuts. Write bounced checks? If you don’t mind losing money, sure. Find random items with your Survival skills? Absolutely. Gain the ability to Pickpocket anyone and everyone, including your friends? You won’t be liked, but you can do that too.

So what’s the first step in this epic journey of item creation and discovery? You need to go to Skill Guilds found in certain towns. They will teach your characters a set of skills for a small fee, which you then spend Skill Points (SP) on to boost. There are also two categories of skills: Specialties (item creation), and Combat Skills. Those in the former will improve a character’s ability to craft items in a range of different fields. Those in the latter grant characters abilities during battle such as sneaking in behind an enemy, speeding up casting times, improving the odds of parrying, and much more. Every Skill Guild in Expel will teach the party everything they need to know, but you likely won’t get the most bang for your buck until you’re well into Energy Nede.

An additional bonus to leveling the Specialty skills is a boost to specific stats. If you want a character to have more Strength, build up Functionality, Kitchen Knife and Scientific Ability. If you want someone with more Intelligence, boost Mineralogy, Fairyology and Functionality. Once again, RPG Shrines comes to the rescue with detailed breakdowns of each skill, their benefits, and how much SP it takes to level up each rank. Some skills also have miscellaneous effects like improving the efficacy of healing items, adjusting prices in shops, and lowering SP and experience required.

Specialties

These are the item creation skills themselves. These are the specific Specialties that result in items; Alchemy, Art, Authoring, Compounding, Cooking, Customize, Machinery, Metalwork, Pickpocket, Reproduction, and Survival.

The remaining Specialties not mentioned above provide more intangible benefits. Familiar summons a bird to do shopping for you while you’re running around. Identify lets you reveal what those annoying “?” items actually are. Musical Talent lets you play songs to temporarily receive intangible benefits. Oracle grants you messages that are pretty much worthless flavor text. Practice allows battle members to gain more experience in exchange for weakening them. Finally, Scout increases or decreases the probability of monsters attacking. Of these, I never used Oracle, Practice and Scout much. Scout’s only purpose for me was to help characters unlock the Talent for Sixth Sense when combined with Orchestra.

To boost any of these Specialties, you need to invest SP into the skills attached to them. Most of them have two or three skills at max, but Authoring, Reproduction and Scout just have one each. The Specialty’s level will increase according to the average levels of the skills, always rounded down. Say you’re leveling Mech Knowledge and Mech Operation to level up Machinery. Mech Knowledge is at level 6 while Mech Operation is at level 5. Thus, Machinery is at level 5 when rounded down. Of course, making items in Machinery will not work unless the character has the Talents for Dexterity and Sense of Design unlocked.

Cooking

One thing I want to mention for this particular Specialty is that some food items cannot be produced by everyone. In particular, those classified as “tea” (read: alcohol) can only be made with those not considered underage. It’d be kind of awkward to present a game to censors where minors are making alcohol, though there's apparently no problem with them consuming it (insert eyeroll emote here). In this case, Celine, Ashton, Opera, Ernest, Bowman, Dias, Noel and Chisato are considered adults who can make alcohol by using Grain. In exchange, the underage characters (Claude, Rena, Precis and Leon) can produce more kid-friendly items that the adults cannot. Even though Claude is 19 years old, he is considered a minor for this purpose.

Talents

There are two ways to earn SP: leveling up in battle, and unlocking Talents. Battle levels are intuitive enough, but Talents are not. For a character to be able to make anything, they need to have the natural ability for it first. Otherwise your characters are going to be making junk or failing at skills like music and calling a bird all the time, which is a waste of items and money. For music, the song will sound off-key and the effect will not work properly. You can check a character’s unlocked Talents by going into the Skills menu and hitting Triangle two times. These are the list of Talents available in the game, and which Specialty skills are tied to a given Talent to unlock them:

  • Originality: Customize and Metalwork
  • Dexterity: discover through Metalwork, Compounding, or Machinery. It is also be used through Pickpocketing, but the Talent cannot be discovered this way
  • Writing Ability: Authoring
  • Pitch: Musical Talent
  • Sixth Sense: Scout (Rena and Opera can never learn this Talent)
  • Sense of Taste: Cooking
  • Sense of Design: Art and Machinery (Ashton can never learn this Talent)
  • Sense of Rhythm: Musical Talent
  • Love of Animals: Familiar (Opera can never learn this Talent; Celine must start with this, or she will never learn it)
  • The Blessing of Manna: tied to Alchemy, but is the only Talent that cannot be unlocked. Only the magic users Rena, Celine, Leon and Noel have this Talent by default

Not everyone can make everything – some characters are more talented in certain fields while horrible in others. This can usually be discerned by a character’s personality and mannerisms throughout the story. For instance, Claude’s default Talents allow him to be good at Metalwork and Machinery, but bad at Cooking and Scout. Rena can be considered an antithesis to Claude, being good at Cooking but not at Art or Machinery. However, if you have Claude making an item in Cooking and he unlocks the Sense of Taste Talent, that’s 100 free SP for you right there. You might’ve also noticed that Opera cannot learn two Talents whatsoever, making her Talents pool the worst of the cast.

Of the entire cast, only Leon and Noel can learn every possible Talent for the Seasoned Adventurer achievement due to them having Blessing of Manna, which none of the fighters will start with nor will they ever learn through any means. Rena does have Blessing of Manna, but she cannot learn Sixth Sense. Celine is also not a good option because she has a 10% chance to start with Love of Animals, and she cannot learn it if she does not have it. Between the two viable characters, Noel has the overall best odds of learning everything.

RPG Shrines has an excellent table of the probabilities for each character learning Talents. Some of these probabilities are so low that it would not be worth trying to brute force unlocking them in Disc 1, especially with how expensive certain materials can be. Wait until Disc 2 when you reach North City - you gain access to the Super Specialty skill Orchestra due to having enough instruments for the party to play. Level it up to 10, and have the party play the song to dramatically increase a character’s success at item creation, allowing them to unlock Talents much more easily. Another option is to have the Violin 2 song “Hail the Goddess” unlocked to improve the effectiveness of Specialty commands. The Violin is also only available in North City, so you have to wait for this too.

Speaking of Hail the Goddess, a strange thing happened to me while I was trying to unlock Ashton’s Love of Animals during my Claude run. I played Orchestra over and over again without any success. Normally it works for me without any issues, but for some reason it was very stubborn this time. The moment I played Hail the Goddess however, it worked for me after 10 Pet Food uses. I suppose if you’re hitting a wall with Orchestra, try playing Hail of the Goddess instead.

If you want some Disc 1 Talent unlocks with cheaper items, try going for Love of Animals, Sense of Taste and Writing Ability. Sixth Sense may be a free Specialty that doesn’t consume items, but it’s also the absolute worst one to unlock, so don’t bother trying. If you’re masochistic enough to try, just keep changing the Scout options back and forth, or even just mash an option over and over again.

Specialty Support Items

Another factor that can determine the likelihood of successfully creating something are miscellaneous items you may find either through creation or from chests. Some of these seemingly useless, space-wasting items include Element Analyzer, Erlenmeyer Flask, Musical Software, Soldering Iron and such, mainly found through crafting Machinery items. These are Specialty Support Items, and as the name implies, they improve a Specialty’s success rate and/or allow you access to a wider range of craftable items you wouldn’t be able to make otherwise. For instance, the Magical Rasp raises the success rate of Customize and Machinery, and also changes what items are available in Blacksmith. If you don’t want those changes anymore, sell the Magical Rasp.

Since RPG Shrines lists every item available in this category, including the consumables, I’ll only list the relevant support items that improve the success of a Specialty and how to acquire them. If the Calnus is a location specified for Pickpocketing, this is only available in Claude’s route in Eluria Tower when he unexpectedly gets beamed up to the Calnus. If Rena is your protagonist, you’re out of luck.

  • All-Purpose Knife: raises success of Cooking when doing the Fun City Cooking Mastery contest. Craft in Blacksmithing
  • Antiseptic Gloves: raises success of Compounding. Craft in Machinery
  • Element Analyzer: raises success of Identify. Craft in Machinery, or Pickpocket in Giveaway
  • Erlenmeyer Flask: raises success of Alchemy. Craft in Machinery, or Pickpocket in Lacour or Central City
  • Graphic Software: raises success of Art. Craft in Machinery, or Pickpocket in Calnus or Central City
  • Lezard Flask: allows Alchemy to make Meteorite, Mithril, Moonite, Rainbow Diamond, Rune Metal and Sage’s Stone. Buy this in either Central City or North City
  • Magical Rasp: Raises success of Customize and Machinery, plus changes available items in Blacksmith. Buy this in the Fake Gallery
  • Magician’s Hand: equip as an accessory, allowing for Pickpocket to work with greater efficiency than with Bandit’s Gloves. Craft in Machinery, or Pickpocket in Armlock
  • Musical Software: raises success of Musical Talent. Pickpocket in Calnus, Central City, North City or Armlock. One is found in a chest in Eluria Tower if you don’t want to Pickpocket
  • Ririca: greater chance of Reproduction succeeding than Magical Camera. Craft in Machinery
  • Soldering Iron: raises success of Metalwork. Craft in Machinery
  • Survival Kit: raises success of Survival producing free items. Craft in Machinery, or Pickpocket in Calnus or Central City
  • Text Software: raises success of Authoring and Publishing. Craft in Machinery, or Pickpocket in Calnus or Central City

Super Specialties

So now that you understand Skills and Talents, and that individual characters can craft items through Specialties, what are Super Specialties (or Super(s), as I call them) supposed to be? These are Specialties tapping into the entire party’s abilities, not just a single person’s. You cannot level up a Super directly. Instead, you have to dump SP into multiple party members’ skills to improve their Specialties, and the Super will level up automatically according to a formula that RPG Shrines explains in detail. Basically, just keep boosting individual skills with SP and you’ll get the Supers eventually. A benefit to Supers is that they don’t require Talents like individual Specialties do.

Recall that I previously mentioned a Super called Orchestra. This calls upon the party’s combined Musical Talent and Art skills to ultimately compose a song that allows party members to enjoy certain benefits. One of them is the ability create items with near 100% success even if they don’t have the Talent for it, which then unlocks Talents for more SP dumping. The trouble is that you have to wait until Disc 2 to buy enough musical instruments to be able to use the Super. Aside from Orchestra, the other fantastic Supers to use are Publishing for Affinity manipulation, Blacksmith for crafting some good armor early on, and Reverse Side for certain… shenanigans.

Master Chef is all right if you want a large stockpile of potent healing items to conserve your in-battle items for a long dungeon like Fienal or Cave of Trials. I never really used Comprehension, Come on Bunny or Identify All even when I was younger, so I couldn’t say how beneficial those are. Come on Bunny is the worst of the bunch since the Bunny becomes obsolete about 25% into Disc 2 when you get the Synard (a.k.a. your airship), plus you’d want to fight battles for levels, SP and voice clips anyway.

Reverse Side

This is a Super Specialty that lets you produce 10 different items which let you ‘cheat’ the system a little. You need Vellum Paper to be able to use Reverse Side, which is first available in Linga. The drawback is that your Affinity levels will be lowered, but that will not be a problem with the books produced by Publishing. Since there isn’t much information available for what Reverse Side’s items can do, I’ll describe them here.

  • Bounced Check: failure item, causes you to lose money every second. Sell these ASAP
  • Contract: consume it while in an inn to be able to stay there for free permanently
  • Fill-Up: three random items are produced from a large item pool, some of which are fantastic late-game weapons. The item pool is the same as for the Treasure Chest, Fountain Card, Lien, and Jack-In-The-Box
  • Forged Bills: sell for 5000 Fol each
  • Forged Checks: sell for 20,000 Fol each
  • Forged Documents: sell for 50,000 Fol each
  • Forged Medals: dramatically boosts a character’s EXP bar. Only works up to level 100
  • Lien: same as Fill-Up, but only produces one item
  • Life Insurance: receive 1000 Fol when used to resurrect a KO’ed party member
  • Second Ledger: 5% discount when making purchases
  • Stock Certificates: earn Fol as long as it’s in your inventory

PICKPOCKETING

Of the many Specialties available in the game, Pickpocketing is unique in that you acquire items from NPCs and even your own party members during PAs. While the vast majority of this stuff is junk, some of these items are absolutely amazing and essential for your adventure, so understanding how to pull it off successfully is good to know. The penalty is that it will lower Affinity levels, but once again Publishing trivializes this. There are also a number of requirements and rules associated with the skill.

When you start your chosen hero’s story campaign and go through the first bits of dialogue, immediately check their Talents. Make sure they have the Talent for Dexterity unlocked by default. If they don’t, reset and start a fresh game to reroll their Talents. You want Dexterity in order for early game Pickpocket attempts to actually be successful. If you want them to discover it through Specialties, make items in either Metalwork, Machinery or Compounding. Of these, Compounding is the least expensive in the early game. Pickpocketing itself does not allow them to discover Dexterity.

Next, you need to spend SP on the skills Poker Face and Courage, which will unlock the Pickpocketing skill. Also spend SP in Perseverance to reduce the SP cost. While everyone can learn Pickpocketing, it only has utility for the hero. Courage is bought in Cross’ Skill Guild in the Sensibility 1 package for 400 Fol, while Poker Face and Perseverance are bought in Herlie’s Skill Guild in the Sensibility 2 package for 1600 Fol. That’s 2000 Fol you’ll need just to buy the skills. The next major money sink is buying the Bandit’s Gloves in Herlie’s antique store for a whopping 40,000 Fol. This is required to be equipped as an accessory to enable stealing. Later on when you have access to Material Kits in Linga and can boost the skills for Machinery, you can craft the Magician’s Hand, which is a better Bandit’s Gloves.

You’ll need to do some leveling to get SP, so the money should accumulate from both monsters and selling items. Do some item creation with cheap ingredients like Egg/Dairy Products and Vegetables and sell the new items to turn a small profit. For grinding battles, go to Lasguss Mountains just north of Cross. The monsters there will hit hard and KO your party at first, but if you’re lucky to run into a battle with just balloon-type enemies called Shouts, you’ll be able to beat them easily because they do nothing but absorb your allies’ MP. Win enough of these battles and your levels will balance out to meet the enemies’. If you need to heal, run to Cross and use the inn.

Save the thievery until both Courage and Poker Face are level 10 for the hero, because you only get one chance to steal from an NPC in Second Story. If the attempt fails, you have to reset. In Second Evolution, everyone has three items to steal and you only get three tries from each NPC. If you want to steal from absolutely everyone, a LOT of resetting will be required. Furthermore, your party members will have different items to steal from the numerous PAs available. If you’re looking to steal from as many characters as humanly possible, don’t view any PAs until your Pickpocketing is maxed out and you have the Magician’s Hand. However, I don’t recommend trying to do perfect steals from absolutely everyone. Even with the Magician’s Hand and Pickpocketing at level 10, the success rate still won’t be 100%. Some of the harder-to-steal items tend to be equipment. Just get enough to meet the 350 steals for the Sleight of Hand cheevo, then just steal 500 times regardless of success or failure for Finders Keepers.

Unfortunately, you must use the Bandit’s Gloves to steal from everyone in Clik before it goes boom, since you have zero access to Material Kits plus the skills for Machinery at that point in the story. You also want to fail a steal from a specific woman in the clothing shop’s change room for the Pervert!! achievement. If she catches you, there’s your cheevo. If not, you get Odd Clothes from her.

There are some special items that are only available through Pickpocketing, and particular achievements are tied to this. As I mentioned in the Specialty Support Items section of Skills, Talents and Specialties, there is a unique instance of Claude being able to explore the Calnus during Eluria Tower’s events, which Rena cannot do if her route is chosen. This is also a crucial moment for stealing good stuff due to one of the NPCs having a Battle Suit for the Combat Ready achievement.

These are the most notable items to steal, the location and from which NPC, and if you need to trigger a PA for it.

Mischief

Location: Clik

NPC: Filia

PA: Yes

This is a really tough steal to pull off in the early game because you need to invest a lot of time grinding for SP and money, and it must be done because it’s one of the accessories needed for the Good Fortune is on Your Side achievement. This personally took me about 3 or 4 hours of grinding at Lasguss Mountains. Once you’re ready, initiate the PA in Clik involving a strange woman named Filia begging the citizens to flee the city. After the dialogue concludes, steal from her (and your party members too – Rena has Fruit Syrup, and Celine has Ruby Rod. In a normal PA where they’re walking around in their usual spots, Rena has the Mystical Beings book, and Celine has Cinderella Glass). If successful, you’ll nab the Mischief accessory from Filia, which randomly produces one of the following items while walking around:

Aquaberry, Rose Hips, Lavender, Spectacles, Pet Food, Silver, Sapphire, Gold, Ruby, Green Beryl, Crystal, Killer Poison, Magic Rock, Peep-peep Bomb, Silence Card, Sour Syrup, Poison Check, Silver Cross, Forged Medals, 5 FOL, ~20 FOL, ~100 FOL, ~1000 FOL

So was it worth all the hassle to get this accessory? I don’t think so, considering the Treasure Chest from Mars Village has a much higher and better item pool. It is a one-time accessory only found through this method though, so if you’re trying to get a perfect item collection or want the cheevo, there is that.

Feet Symbol

Location: Clik

NPC: sailor near the boat

PA: No

If you’ve done the grinding for Filia’s steal, you should be all set for the rest of the game (or at least until you can upgrade from the Bandit’s Gloves to the Magician’s Hand). Any steals in Clik have to be done with the Bandit’s Gloves. Anyway, this is a pretty useful accessory for fighters in the early game, granting a STR +10% and DEX +30% boost.

Berserk Ring

Location: Clik

NPC: sailor who is mad at the playing kids

PA: No

Another accessory for fighters that places them in a berserk status, raising their attack power but losing the ability to control them.

Treasure Chest

Location: Mars Village

NPC: old man near inn

PA: No

This is a consumable that randomly drops two or three items from a pre-sorted list when opened. This can potentially be fantastic since there are 223 possible item drops in the Treasure Chest's loot table, which include incredible weapons for everyone like Marvel Sword, Rune Full Moon, Sorceress Knuckles, Lotus Eater and Hecatoncheire, if you’re willing to put in the time for resets. This item pool is the same as for Fill-up, Fountain Card, Lien, and Jack-In-The-Box, so don’t stress if you’re not in the mood to bother with this. The Treasure Chest also has a 6.66% chance to be made in Art using Magical Clay. I personally rolled a Sorceress Knuckles for Rena.

Rainbow Diamond

Location: Arlia Village

NPC: lovey-dovey woman in house left of entrance

PA: No

Rainbow Diamonds aren’t available until much later in the game, so nabbing one for Customize is great. If you’re playing as Rena and recruit Opera, do the Light Box + Rainbow Diamond combo to get the Seventh Ray, which is needed for a PA in Herlie.

Battle Suit #1

Location: Mars Village

NPC: Ernest

PA: Yes

Ernest may suck as a fighter, but the dude comes loaded with two Battle Suits for you to steal. This is the first one you can acquire…

Battle Suit #2

Location: Linga

NPC: Ernest

PA: Yes

And this is the second.

Beret

Location: Linga

NPC: Keith

PA: No

While the Beret doesn’t increase stats, it does improve the chances for item creation being successful. This can also be bought in Central City if you miss out or fail the attempt.

Battle Suit #3

Location: Calnus (Claude route only)

NPC: cadet at the right side of the door

PA: No

One of the Battle Suits needed to complete the set of four. Even with this, you absolutely need Ernest in your party because there are only five total Battle Suits in the entire game.

Bunny Shoes

Location: Fun City

NPC: Bunny Mannequin at race area

PA: No

The Bunny Shoes are an amazing set of foot armor that dramatically increases the equipped character’s running speed in battle. To get more of them, you either need to place bets in the Bunny Races or get lucky with Santa’s Boots.

Treasure Chest

Location: Fun City

NPC: old man in Cooking Master square

PA: No

Yet another Treasure Chest stolen from an old man. At this point, you don’t have much of a conscience anymore, do you?

Dragon Claws

Location: Armlock

NPC: Noel

PA: Yes

You need to do the PA with Noel in the weapon shop before stealing from him. These are knuckles that either Rena or Noel can equip.

Santa’s Boots

Location: Arlia Village

NPC: boy in lovey-dovey couple’s house (same as the one with the Rainbow Diamond)

PA: No

This boy will not exist in the game until you reach the final save point in Fienal Tower, then go to the old man in Fun City to be transported to the virtual simulation of Expel. The Santa’s Boots will produce a free item when you stay at an inn. You could potentially go to a free inn like Rena’s house and set a turbo button to stay there over and over again while you sleep overnight IRL to farm these items. Some of the more exceptional items include the Holy Farwell, Seraphic Garb, and Bunny Shoes. The full pool of items includes the following:

Ishtar's Robe, Music Box, Gold Ring, Shield Earrings, Shield Ring, Secret Boots, Silver Cross, Silver Barrette, Cinderella Glass, Stone Check, Holy Farwell, Seraphic Garb, Necklace, Bunny Shoes, Paralysis Check, Barrier Armor, Healing Ring, Beautiful Ice Cream, Pretty Idol, Protection Ring, Pet Food, Poison Check, Mithril Dress, Mental Ring, Fairy Statue, Resistance Ring, Wisdom Ring