Believe me, PSU did a ton of things to improve from the PSO system. However, you don't see the reason why the changes are made, from the beginning. The timing thing really didn't make a difference, when it came down to it mainly because the strategies of how to really hurt monster changed.
The strafing model works because monsters have completely changed and updated aggression patterns. They're also, on a whole, a lot faster now so the gameplay isn't exactly accomodating for a style that relies on people constantly, turning their backs to reposition (for a while), and then try to turn around and get a fix on. You need to do that, still, to avoid various overwhelming factors, but it doesn't become your whole game anymore. Now you can pop out more stuff on them, before you need to turn. In short, it takes some movement shackles off you and the monsters.
Too bad I never got to hook up with Magician. But I hope he got with a party that knew what they were doing. I was hoping to see people on, when I got on, to give some examples of how to manually string attack combinations together. And to make decisions as to *when* it is best to utilize certain attack skills and such.
A good example is one of those SEED flower mid-boss type things. The ones that shoot the powerful blue orbs, and also have a pretty nice 360 swipe attack. They prime themselves before the swipe, and that's usually the best time to do a Saber/Sword special. It knocks them down and stuns them for people to pour on damage.
Strafing, on the other hand, allows forces to better aim linear spells as well as ramping up the Ranger's game. Particularly fans of Dual gun weapon styles. So, in a way, it (in combination with skills, attack interrupts (which happen as a combination of factors) does a lot to improve the Ranger's and Hunter's game. They're just more fun to play, and they have more variety than before. No need to leave all that kind of fun just to the Forces. Plus that ability to move around while shooting certain guns is a boon. I always strafe, but that's because I feel the new system really pushes one to do so. It's not like an FPS at all, even though they both have strafing. Heck, Anybody who has played the Hunter: The Reckoning for Xbox, or any of the other (white wolf series) Hunter games, will relate to the idea of a game that has strafing, but still doesn't make it any closer to an FPS for it. To a certain degree, what it does, is make more things truly physically possible for Phantasy Star characters to do, possible. Once you put it to good use, it just looks and feels more natural.
Also, there are advanced classes as well, as Magician pointed out; but I doubt anybody would see them in the demo. Especially with the way Mission Points are given (online. The offline Mission Points for raising class levels happen more quickly). I played the Beta strictly as my Force named "Orlando D. ". Kind of funny seeing people wandering around, and I'm just going directly to places doing exactly what I learned that an early force should go for, right away. Every step with a purpose. But that's mostly because of the short time given for the beta.
So remember, even though there were changes to battle options for a player, don't go assuming the rest of the game is exactly like PSO. Yeah, it wouldn't be so good if the rest of the game remained the same, but you just have to get in mind that the game is revamped to take advantage of the new battle system. You can manually string attack combinations together, for a reason. It wont take very long to run into monsters that can really take a beating, not to mention also coming in numbers.
My attitude, I guess, is that I grabbed the new system's abilities by the bullhorns and ran with it. It's fun to utilize all that the system gives you at a time, and even more fun when you survive by the skin of your teeth because you did it (as opposed to dying for being too frugal with it). You have to do quite a bit of PP conservation, which is what causes one to learn how to balance weapons and switch appropriately. The interface is also leagues better as for the most part, you have to deal with no menus while fighting, and you can pretty much access everything with a quick touch of a button or two. Over time, if you get used to your setup, you wont even look at the double scroll-wheel, on the bottom right, and just do it by feel.
Not the best of both worlds, but damn close.