New lobby sitting pose, and Mags have Photon Blasts.

 

Photon Blasts turn your mag into a mythical creature, like Unicorns.
During a photon blast, the player and the creature can attack together.

 

The partisan, and it's "twirling dance move" at the top.

 

The launcher

 

The Talis can shoot Technics from the cards!

 

For more information check out the previous post.

It appears there will be 8 weapon classes by the time the game releases, but in a future update more weapon classes will be added.

Through various interviews we've long known that new weapon classes we're going to be added into the game. For those who have read up on datamining of Alpha test clients would already know what weapon classes are hidden deep inside the data. But today we have our first confirmations to these weapon types. This was posted within Famitsu's PSO2 Beta Test article, which Shougai summarized.

New Weapon Class: Partizan

• Hunter Exclusive
• Quick Attack
• Wide area attack
• It has a special action called "舞い twirl?" (We're not quite sure in what way the move actually looks like.) this speeds up your gear which eventually makes it likely that you'll release some kind of forward shockwave.

New Weapon Class: Launcher

• Rangers Exclusive
• A heavyweight high power shooting weapon
• You hold this gun beside the body like PSU's Grenade Launcher.
• Wide range blast.

New Weapon Class: Talis

• Force Exclusive
• Throw cards to directly hit the enemy
• Throw cards and a technic is fired off from the card.
• *You could throw a card at a party member and make it cast resta
• *You could throw a card in the sky and cast a wider range Razonde technic.
• (Don't know if you are supposed to jump to throw cards in the sky.)

Mags

• Mags have photon blasts
• When a mag does a photon blast it changes into a "幻獣" mythical beast.
• For example, it can change into something resembling a unicorn. 
• The player can act freely during a photon blast too.

Lobby

• The Arks lobby has been renovated.
• In the center there's a elevator that transports you between 2 floors.
• The upper level is called the Gate Area where you can receive quests.
• The lower level is the shop area and rest area.
• Shougai says the lobby is reminiscent of PSO ep2 Lab area.

 Sakai's update

Just to recap since it's covered already, in the latest Famitsu you can read about a new  weapon classes, new lobby, and mags and photon blasts. In the closed beta test, each class got a new weapon type, so there's 8 for now. More weapon categories will be added in an update after the official game comes out. The mag's photon blast design is very flashy. The Arks lobby has expanded!

On 3/18 you can watch the Dengeki Playstation conference live on Nico Nico. PSO2's coverage begins around 15:40 JST. He's going to show some PSVita images and show the new information that was posted in Famitsu Magazine.

After the news of PSO2 on Vita, Sakai received some feedback from the Phantasy Star veterans over his decision to make both versions cross playable. Generally the concerns stem from the handling of Phantasy Star Universe on PS2, how the PS2 version handicapped the updates for the PC version.

When making PSO2 for the Vita, he understood that you all would be wary of such a product, but under careful consideration and examination, they decided PlayStation Vita could indeed handle such a game.

 

Can PSO2 Vita even handle large-scale updates?

The PlayStation 2 version of PSU couldn't support any large-scale updates at all, they couldn't add any stages nor enemies.  But in terms of what they support, PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 2 are two totally different platforms.

For one, there were PlayStation 2's without a hard drive so of course you could not add more stages, or enemies, or even huge system updates. However the Playstation Vita can certainly handle it all.

 

Wouldn't it be easier to cheat on such a device?

Well in the past, Phantasy Star Online and Phantasy Star Portable 2 stored data offline making it easier to cheat. Even so, they still were able to support the games by banning accounts of cheaters. PSO2 is online only, so data is stored online to keep it secure.

 

3G Players

Phantasy Star Online 2 can be played on 3G or Wifi! But the amount of data that's supported on both is considerably different. On Wifi, data speeds were close enough in comparison to PC players. However, for 3G, it will be difficult for the data speeds to catch up, so they have plans to do something separate when you are on that network. (Sakai did not go into detail as to how different the data communication would be on 3G.)

 

About Cross-Platform playing on Vita and PC

It is possible for the Vita version to play at the same time with the PC version. However, Vita players would have to undergo their own beta testing to see if things go smoothly. It is not what they are aiming for, but depending on the results they may have to say, "PC and Vita players can not play together at the same time."

They received lots of requests on how people wanted to play PSO2 on something other than PC. So they decided to give the PlayStation Vita a shot as a new alternative way to play this game.

March still has some more announcements to go through. By the end of the month, Sakai plans to make announcements about the next test!