Nice review, CW. It may interest other players as well as yourself, so I'll throw in a few notes on my own experiences compared to your own.
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One revision I’m particularly happy with is the change to Skill Focus, now providing a +5 bonus. Since the Skills also happen to be broader and more useful this is a very appealing Feat choice. On the downside Dodge remains as a +1 bonus to Reflex Defense (the standard defense in combat) against a single target, as it has been in other forms of d20. For me this makes it too weak to be worth the Feat, and I’ll end up house ruling it to +1 against all targets.
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While that one point can make a big difference in this game, making an elusive character practically unhittable, it does seem pretty small compared to most of the feats in this game. The Dodge feat from
Mutants & Masterminds might prove more useful: it provides a +2 versus one opponent or +1 against all opponents, not both at the same time. I've found it useful in all of my d20 games.
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The critical hit mechanic is the same as the miniatures game and, while simple, I strongly suspect it will result in large groups of throw away enemies becoming unpredictably lethal. It works well in the minis game, I’m just not so sure it’s appropriate in the RPG.
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The nonheroic character classes can also be dangerous on stats alone, though few rise high enough in level to do so. A throwaway encounter can turn lethal in a heartbeat if you don't watch the enemy combat stats, particularly attack bonus. After all, most still use the same weapons as the PCs, even if they don't have bonuses to damage according to their level. Blasters in this game HURT, so take care!
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On a final note, armor in this game does not stack with the Defense bonus from being a given level so characters over level eight or so have no incentive to wear armor (barring small bonuses such as internal gadgets and such). This is interesting because it encourages the main characters to run around without armor on, which is good for emulating the movie characters but once again may bother folk focused on realism and the logical usefulness of armor.
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It's easily houseruled around, for those who dislike this mechanic. The previous edition used Damage Reduction for armor, and it was easily balanced by Dexterity maximums. Quicker characters who didn't worry so much about getting hit could avoid armor, while slower ones would tend to use it.
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In addition to detailed creation rules a variety of different types of droids are presented. A Crab Droid, Destroyer Droid, Astromech Droid, Probe Droid, and several others showcase different types of droids though most of the entries are meant to be convenient adversaries for the player characters. That’s good, but a few more utility droids (especially astromechs, which are strongly supported by starfighters) would have been welcome.
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Nearly all of the included droids are from the minis game, which supports your idea that one of the main reasons for writing the RPG was to give minis players something else to do with that collectible money pit sitting on the shelves. Of the most note was a Dwarf Spider Droid from
Star Wars: Republic Commando, which is also represented in the minis game and pretty much nowhere else. Nice way to show how minis might be represented in the game, but not much help in letting players create droid heroes like Threepio and Artoo. Hopefully there will be a supplement on this subject soon. Droids are so much a part of Star Wars that it would be criminal not to give them better representation than this!
On the whole, the game does improve greatly over previous d20 editions, and it's easier and faster to use. Nice bit of gamecraft for WotC. Hopefully we'll see other products using this system soon.
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