Time to skim through Cyborgs and Cigarettes and see what jumps out to me.
A GLOSSARY UP FRONT HELL YES
Action seems pretty straightforward, with an interesting distinction. You get two Actions on a turn: A mechanical action and a thematic action. Thematic Actions are actions that don't require dice rolls, like talking or stowing/drawing something.
This uses the Assembly system, which based on what I'm reading is pretty interesting. There are 5 Attributes (Might, Finesse, Brain, Savvy, and Moxie), and to overcome an obstacle, you build a dice pool based on Attribute + Skill.
The twist is that your Attribute determines the Dice Size and the skill is your Dice Number. The book's example is a D8 Brains character using Technology skill (rank 4) would roll 4d8 to complete the task. Then you roll against the Difficulty Threshold (set, usually between 2-4), and if any of your dice results are greater than or equal to the threshold, you succeed. Having 0 points in a skill means that if you want to try the check, it's just your 1dAttribute die, but the Difficulty Threshold is increased by 1, to represent how untrained you are. Seems neat.
Skill ratings go from 0-4 for PCs, and 0-3 for "Non-Ace" NPCs. This means "grunts and not special characters" and not "non-asexual NPCs". Looks like the maximum dice pool you can have is 5 (4 from skill + a bonus), but if you exceed 5, from multiple bonuses, you only use the largest dice available (So if you rolled 4d10 for skills, +1d8 for Rally from an ally then like, +1d4 from a piece of gear, you'd only roll the 4d10 + 1d8 and drop the 1d4)
Combat is similar. Attribute + Skill vs target's Defense Value, which is just a personal Difficulty Threshold. Every die that meets or beats the DV does 1 damage. Total up all hits, subtract armor, and boom, attack resolved. Flanking and Ambushing a target reduces DV by 1, taking the mechanical Guard action increases it by 1.
There are a few Dice Modifiers too, so after the roll, but before results, you can mess with some dice using things like Reroll x, Maximize (turn one die to it's max number), Minimize (Set a die to 1), Static add/remove x (Get a pool of x you can distribute among any number of dice. So x=5 is add 5 to one die, add 1 to 5 dice, or any combination). Feels like a great way to take advantage of an enemy once you zero in on it's DV.
Build character through picking background + Profession which gives you your health scaling, defense scaling, wealth, and then selectable moves. The profession also determines what your key attribute is, and when you get to use your Profession bonuses and so on. There's also a glossary of the various talents each Profession has access to that further explains them, so the class section is a bit cleaner to read.
Downside is that there is no up-front description of the vibes or theme of the game until page 64 of an 88 page document, in the GM section. You can pick up some things based on the PCs being called Torpedos doing Jobs for Hot Shots, who work for the Fat Cats. You're disposable assets that the big companies or powerful individuals will use liaisons to deal with to keep the heat off themselves.
The game takes place in 1921, before the Great Depression, but there have been huge technological leaps, allowing for the creation of Decks and computers that store great deals of information. Of automotive leaps and artificial intelligences that develop sapience. It's Shadowrun by way of Al Capone.
THAT is an interesting sell. It's just Shadowrun in the 1920s, set in the seedy underworld of bootleggers and mafias and gangs, living on the edge of society as it goes through tremendous rapid change as a new alloy allowed for the creation of vast information systems and artificial life.