This is a beautiful book and well organized. They have cleaned up a bit of the rules from 4e but its essentially the same game. If you are an old time fan looking to get back into Shadowrun or new to Shadowrun this is probably the book you should buy. While I do prefer older editions SR4A is streamlined and arguably easier to play. New players may want to pick up the runners toolkit for PACKS as this new edition adds to the slowness of character creation by using a point build system. The Matrix rules are very close to the 1e rules only nodes are now generic and you no longer get to add your reaction attribute. There is almost no difference between a Hermetic Mage and a Shaman from a mechanics standpoint and target numbers are no longer variable. If this sounds like the streamlining you always wanted you should pick it up.
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