This game had quite an impact on my imagination at the turn of the 1980s-1990s, probably because modern hi-tech meets fantasy was a collision of my interests just the way it was for the authors. That said, my angle was more military/guns meets magic than machine meets magic - cyberpunk was only vaguely on my radar, but war and fantasy were much bigger influences. This did have quite important consequences for how I was to eventually feel about the game.
The book was impressively produced, with a much more attractive feel than most of the games I was used to (Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay would have been the exception). It has some things which are common now but were rare than: lots of setting information, an introductory story, lots of worked examples, and so on. It felt impressively detailed at the beginning. The setting was well-presented, although even by my late teens, I thought that some of the "history" was fairly preposterous even on its own terms of magic and elves and goblins coming into the world. I think that this is quite a problem for all games set "in the real world" - Twilight 2000 at least shares very similar issues. The authors know where they want to get to but putting together a story to get there is quite tricky and can end up having large unintended consequences. It is given a reasonable amount of detail so one can imagine the world and get started - in some ways, probably too much detail since it will introduce a concept but give basically no information about it.
The basic premise is quite simple: an "adventuring party" consisting of people with combat, magic, computer and infiltration skills conduct deniable contract missions on behalf of shadowy figures and corporations. The party is typically criminal in nature, although one could set up a game where that wasn't necessarily so. The shadowy nature of these provides lots of opportunities for double-crossing and plotting which would be more difficult to present in a similar "commando" mission game.
Character generation was quite good fun. It used a priority system which I don't remember having used before - perhaps Universe had one? I can't quite remember. That said, it felt that it was pretty pointless playing one of the fantasy races unless going for a very specific min/max build. Trolls could be built to be reasonably invulnerable to physical attacks for example at the cost of not being particularly amazing at anything else. Lots of "archetypes" for immediate use are presented which were great for getting in the action quicker and perhaps even more importantly, for internalizing the setting, although in many ways the actual builds were pretty woeful, lacking key skills or being under-powered in their most important functional areas. The equipment buys were similarly sub-optimal. None of this 'has' to matter in a game, since a perfectly good game can be made with fairly random processes but in a priority and points system, there doesn't seem much reason to deliberately buy poor abilities or equipment.
The basic game mechanic is quite simple but hides some quite serious quirks. A character attempting an action throws a number of dice equal to a skill or attribute, trying to get a score on one or more of the dice equal to or higher than a "target number" which varies depending upon the difficulty of the task. There is some additional bits in which characters unskilled can use a related skill or an attribute instead to attempt a task, with a higher target number, so characters with a high Computer skill can attempt to Build/Repair Computers (which is a separate skill) using their Computer skill with an appropriate modifier. Carefully built characters will therefore focus on the skills they will use a lot and relying on defaulting to other skills for rarer actions. Characters can also concentrate and specialize, with increasing focus bringing increasing skill levels in certain niche areas rather than more general abilities. A character with the "Ground Vehicles" skill could concentrate in driving tanks and specialize in a certain model of tank, for example. Some actions are augmented by a dice pool, which allows characters to use a certain number of dice for specific actions. Dodging is done in this way, for example.
Combat is...okay, but pretty wonky. It is divided into quite small segments (typically three seconds) which makes action very tactical. Certain characters, particularly those with certain cybernetic modifications can act more quickly and crucially more often than others. A "Street Samurai" will act first and act often, but a "Mercenary" won't. This is so important that it is quite difficult to see what the point of combat-focused characters that don't have certain cybernetic implants is. Toughness and body armour is very effective against physical attacks, so a couple of street Samurai can literally fire round after round of pistol fire into each other and do little to no damage. If one of them is a Troll, then it will be no damage. This has quite important tactical consequences, as the only way to quickly take down one of these characters is to use a very big weapon or to use magic. Tactically the best solution seemed to be to go for mismatches: Samurai should target magic-users and other slower/less armoured combatants, whilst the magic users concentrate on the opposing Samurai. Although rules are given for vehicle combat, the way that damage is scaled doesn't really seem to suit it. I didn't like the rules for defence very much, since it seems far too easy for quick and strong characters to avoid or ignore most hits. Amongst other things, it makes combat go on for quite a while not because everyone is hugging to cover, but because it is quite difficult to hurt people.
Magic is typically very powerful, even for starting characters. It works basically the same as every other test, but has a "Drain" effect, which fatigues the character casting the spell: the more potent the spell, the greater the effect. The "theory" behind the magic of the world is explained quite well but it is quite different from the standard magic of D&D. Magic is more specific to the person, so there is less reason to go looting magic swords and stuff since muggles can't use them anyway. There are two traditions: "hermetic" magic, which is basically academic: mages study magic the way engineers study engineering; and "shamanic" magic, which basically involves getting power from personal totems. Both types can cast spells and summon spirits but they work in a slightly different way.
Computer hacking - or "decking", since characters use "cyberdecks" which allow users to interact with computer systems at (nearly) the speed of thought - has extensive rules. They are quite complicated but do seem to work as a standalone system. However, because they are so involved, it is like a separate "dungeon" for the hacking character to go through which can be very time-consuming. It is almost like they are a specialized thief character that does virtual breaking-and-entering and stealing, although they can "fight" in the virtual world too. When I first played this, a lot of this was reduced to a single action so the hacker did their thing quite quickly then back to the group. Because when I have played it recently it has been as a solo tactical wargame, then it has been okay to take my time over a longer "side quest" but I wouldn't think it would be so useful for group play.
There are plenty of sample NPCs (great!) and equipment lists. The latter imply spending quite a lot of time buying lots of things which is a bit of an acquired taste. Perhaps more importantly, some weapons are just pointless. They are literally worse than their nearest competitors for the same money or more. As a general rule, there is far too much differentiation between weapons in games anyway (the margins in real life are small) but in a fantasy game it is pointless, because no player will ever choose an obviously inferior piece of kit.
Anyway, the idea still works as a gaming concept but I don't think I could bring myself to play many games with the rules as written. The combat, vehicle and hacking rules all need some fairly extensive modifications and to be honest, the fantasy elements appeal less to me now than in the past. I think I would be more likely to use Twilight 2000 or something like that for similar types of games, although I don't think I would mind bringing back Shadowrun to the table every so often.
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