How to unlock a specialty in Star Ocean The Second Story R

Star Ocean The Second Story R is the remake of the classic Star Ocean The Second Story, and with it comes some changes and things that remain the same. One of the things that has stayed during the remake is the classic specialty and skill system, with some tweaks.

One of the earliest questions you may be asking is: How to unlock a specialty in Star Ocean The Second Story R? 

Well luckily, the answer is pretty simple if you know what to do. Learning a specialty in the older Star Ocean games, like First Departure and Second Evolution, would require you to buy the set of skills you needed to be able to acquire the new specialty, but in Star Ocean The Second Story R, a lot of skills are available to you from the off, and you can’t buy sets of skills from the guild anymore. So, learning specialties is becoming just that little bit easier to do. Here’s our guide on how to do so.

How to learn specialties in Star Ocean The Second Story R

A specialty is a type of skill you know that allows you to do certain things like pickpocket people, and even different item creation skills like Art and Alchemy. You gain these from learning certain skills using SP in the Improve menu, under the IC/Specialty menu. That’s the menu you’re going to need to access to be able to learn skills to unlock a specialty in Star Ocean The Second Story R.

Once you’re in that menu, you’re going to want to learn the skills needed to learn the specialty/IC skill that you want. To be able to see the skills you need to acquire for the specialty/IC you’re after, you can use one of a few methods. 

The first is to simply look on the right side of the screen, as it tells you what that skill contributes to. The other is to back out and head to the IC/Specialty menu, and it will tell you what skills you need to be able to use the specialty. But the easiest way is to actually just switch what menu you’re using to upgrade, pressing the button that correlates with the ‘Switch Upgrade’ option at the bottom of the screen, will change the screen to one that allows you to upgrade specialties specifically in Star Ocean The Second Story R. This screen then upgrades all the skills you need to get that specialty, if you have enough SP.

Star Ocean The Second Story R is available for purchase on Steam, and you can check out our other articles here.