The closed beta adds mags, which are mechanical life forms that grow when you give them items. Mags now have an Energy Bar. This bar will let you know when your mag is hungry. When the bar reaches 0% you won't see the mag's full potential. But as you feed it items, it can perform various supporting actions. The mag can help supplement the stats of the player too so you can equip that weapon that requires certain stats.
When the mag reaches a certain level it can evolve and perform "automatic actions". Your mag could be a striking type and will attack the enemies, or with range it could fire bullets, or as a force type mag, it can fire technics.
You can also set "trigger actions" that lets the mag do things under certain circumstances, like when your HP is low, it will heal. Each individual mag will learn trigger actions as it evolves. Even having the same mag as another player, each could possibly have quite different actions. You can also use items called devices to add actions too.
In the closed beta, mags can level to 99, this allows it to grow up to its 2nd stage. If you want a mag you should complete the client order "Mag License" マグライセンス.
In the closed beta, 4 kinds of photon blasts are available. When a mag evolves to its second stage above level 50, it can use photon blasts.
Chaining photon blasts are also possible, when one person uses a photon blast, a circle shows up around them. When other players see this circle they can contribute to the photon blast. When other players chain, the attack power of the photon blast increases!
Closed Beta adds a new city area! This city area isn't on a planet, it's actually on the Arks ship! Up until now, there weren't many city battles in the Phantasy Star Series, this stage could give you the sensation of those FPS games. You can run through this stage and imagine what life is like for the Arks, however this city is under a state of emergency since the Darkers are invading it.
This city area is under a new type of quest that wasn't in Alpha Test 2 called "emergency quests." Several times during the day, this quest is randomly released for 1 hour.
Before the quest is released, an ominous message is shown to all players. Then an emergency call is sent out to all ARKS to defend the city. These quests also are time limited, and PSE and rare interrupt events occur at a higher rate.
The existing areas you've already played will now have new gimmicks, objects, and interrupt events, so please play them too!
There's also a new boss called Dark Ragne (not pronounced as rain).
You may also see him appear within the city area and other fields too but he doesn't show up very often.
Sakai is also going to hold a Character Creation contest, there will be various prizes but one of them could be your very own character showing up in the official game! He hasn't discussed what the other prizes are but he requests that you continue making your own characters.