This book definitely throws a curveball to the oldschool punk. I was simply too young to have seen the original black box edition, but 2020 is like the technologically-compelled gamer's bible. 3.0 had a ton of changes, some good some bad. The art is crap unfortunately. Dolls do not reflect a cyberpunk RPG. I've grown up with Cyberpunk and I always loved the art that came with the original 2020 setting. However, I DO like a lot of the NuTech changes, though the social groupings and concept of Giri seem a little weak at times. For the old school punks, you can still get all Cybered Up and chip in. Bleeding edge tech is still there.
As far as systems go, they might want to also think about putting that empathy box somewhere on the character sheet. They say it's there, but it's missing. Without it, how can someone have cyberpsychosis with no empathy stat? 3.0 mentions two separate ways to track your humanity (one without using an EMP stat, one using old school EMP), and I think in a hurry to publish, they just dragged and dropped some text from 2020 into 3.0 without even checking or revising the old systems to match the new systems. Makes for a confusing way to keep track of the devolvement of the cybered monsters which are a part of the chilling core of the 2020 setting.
All said and done, Mike Pondsmith is still the man. But this is NOT your father's Cyberpunk. Depending on your view, this could be good or bad. Worth a read.
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