Hey, WJ, thanks for the review!
An important thing:
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There’s a lot of leeway in the rules that can lend to abuse. For example, in character creation, there’s nothing to stop you from giving your character a nuclear bomb so you can kill everybody.
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It's true, there's nothing that stops you from doing that, and it happens all the time. It's not abuse, though. Apocalypse is a common feature in the game. Take a look at the mediography in the back and see how many stories mentioned feature some sort of world-ending. That's a feature, not a bug.
The question is, does it get you what you want? You've built the Grid about things you care about as a player. Blowing everyone up might get you what you want, but it might cost you more than you can pay. Don't forget that your Antagonist (played by another person just as smart and creative as you) is created as opposition and is there to present you with hard decisions.
Do you want to set off the bomb if it means the end of your nihilist religion? Or do you want to set it off if you become immortal and are the only one who will never achieve sweet release? Do you want to set it off if your son will be caught in the blast? We don't know what questions will be interesting to ask until we get there, of course, but play itself tells us what's meaningful.
So, yeah, maturity's required, but only insofar as being able to make and offer meaningful choices.
There's kind of a funny way to powergame the system, actually: play to lose on your first two conflicts, then reroll with your links and lose those, too. That will give you a pile of dice on the last conflict to use with your nuclear bomb. You'll have a Protagonist in pretty rough shape.