The mark of a truly great supplement: I have too many ideas for characters after reading the book. Art is top notch, and game design aspects are balanced.

I've always been curious about Japanese tabletop RPGs, so I grabbed their previous offering, Tenra Bansho Zero. I wasn't sold on that one, as it seemed kind of scattershot and unfocused, and I was disappointed. But Double Cross is everything I was hoping for. It's got good mechanics that I haven't seen a million times before. It's got a great combination of minimalist design and complexity. It's designed to be played quickly (3-4 hours per adventure) and its setting is well defined. Worth a look if you're looking for an anime style RPG.

Run & Gun is the first 5th edition Shadowrun book in almost a year, and in many ways, it is a disappointment. I'll give it the benefit of the doubt that it is trying to be more like the classic 'State of the Art' and 'Gun Heaven' books with it's gear presentation, with sales blurb and commentary, but you end up feeling like this is done to fill space. There are far fewer weapons, armors and cool toys than Arsenal but it must be noted that many of them are new or significantly updated. There is also a good deal of artwork, all full color and large, giving it points over Arsenal. However, the lack of quantity really needs to be emphasized. As a point of comparison, Arsenal featured 17 different new melee weapons, while Run & Gun features 5, including the Monofilament Sword that was left out of the core book.

Most categories have 2 to 4 entries, and while I can understand wanting to offer viable, balanced choices instead of one or two good choices and a bunch of mediocre fillers, I feel like this does not take advantage of the games new accuracy system and expanded damage ratings. This is really driven home by the armor section, which has just as many options as Arsenal, many of which have great flavor and neat bonuses that help make them feel unique. There are some runner tools and goodies buried in the tactics section, but they're mostly for combat situations. It should also be noted here that this book /DOES NOT/ contain any rules for vehicles, drones or (most jarringly) gear customization, which was present in the 'combat' books for 3rd and 4th (Cannon Companion and Arsenal).

The rest of the book is taken up, instead, by complex combat systems for tactics, called and trick shots, martial arts, demolitions, hostile environment rules and optional rules hacks for reducing the deadliness of combat. The tactics section outlines the rules for performing things like room sweeps, formations, and other tactics, which now require tactics rolls from team members to perform. The called shots and trick shots sections are walls of numbers and status effects, but do not have rules for headshots. It's a decent system, but the layout makes it look confusing. The other sections are pretty much what we've seen before.

Overall, I'm mixed on the book. There's lots of interesting systems, but the problem I keep coming back to is they feel too complex. For example, combat manuevers that were explained in two sentences in 4th ed, now have two paragraphs explaining how the work and interact with other actions. The gear sections are very uneven and downright weird in some places, such as the choice to have a single new holdout pistol but 4 different types of battering rams. The lack of a gear customization section really makes this book feel like it's missing something. Overall, it just feels very uneven and disappointing for a book that's the first offering in over half a year.

Summing it up:

Pros: New tactical options and systems, good artwork, especially of new gear, Cons: Layout varies from too much white space to walls of text, new positive and negative qualities are scattered throughout book, poor selection of gear aside from armor, lack of customization rules, new rules are difficult to understand at first.

Before you buy this product, understand what you are getting: A cooperative storytelling game, not a traditional tabletop RPG. This is not like M&M, Hero, or even the TSR Marvel RPG. This is more akin to a superhero Mu*'s then a table top game. It's light on mechanics for how to break down a wall or pick a lock, and heavy on mechanics for how to tell a story.

The dice system is very interesting, generates big pools of dice but still uses small and simple numbers because you only select a limited number of the dice and add them together. The biggest change to a traditional system is that the largest dice you don't select determines how well you do something. Rolling 1's creates opening for the gm to make things worse for the players, or lets the other players take advantage of the situatiuon. What is very different is that the mechanics are defined in terms of how the scene plays out, and pc's have as much impact over how the story unfolds as the gm.

THERE IS NO LIMITS/POINT SYSTEM FOR BUILDING A CHARACTER. CHARACTER POWER LEVELS ARE UP TO THE PERSON MAKING THE CHARACTER. BE WARNED. This game is entirely about consensus between the GM and players themselves as to what constitutes acceptable character builds. Basically, this is a game for people who want to do more story driven games and not be so limited by mechanics as to how powerful characters are and what they can do. It's a nice change of pace from trying to gimmick the game system to make your character powerful, but it definitely requires a group thats on the same page as to what is acceptable and what isn't.