Also, not sure if I've mentioned it, but FFG has a new Star Wars rpg out called Edge of the Empire or something like that. They ran a rather elaborate beta process where they told a kit to run the rough draft of the game, and we've been playing the beta for a few months now.
Overall, more frustration than pleasure, though it is hard for me to say how much is the system and how much is the group I'm playing with. For whatever reason (and by 'for whatever reason', I mean 'because of interpersonal conflict between a few of the players'), the party really has not clicked.
But to try to be as objective as possible...
I'm not a very big fan of the dice pool resolution mechanic. In broad strokes it seems interesting- you roll a set of custom dice, depending in quantity on your skills, and they contain pluses and minuses that cancel as in FUDGE, but also contain 'advantages' and 'disadvantages' that cancel separately from the successes and failures and are intended to represent more nuanced results than mere success or failure. So if you try to jump to hyperspace and roll a success and a disadvantage, you might make the jump but damage the motivator in the process, or make the jump but attract imperial attention from the jurisdiction you just left, or...
It seems like a neat idea to make rolling more dynamic, but where it falls down is that it forces the GM to constantly be making up freeform adjudications. You try to pick a lock and get a disadvantage and suddenly instead of just deciding whether you get into the room he has to figure out what bad thing happens to you in addition. Our GM has taken to just ignoring the mechanic when there's nothing interesting he can add as an advantage or disadvantage, but this is not a great solution because it means that the systematic nature of it is gone. It means he's just adding story elements when he feels like it, as he would without the dice. I think I'd like it better if the advantage/disadvantage mechanic didn't operate on every roll- if perhaps there was a separate advantage/disadvantage die that you could sometimes bring into your pool. By limiting the frequency you could get the benefits of the system without the increase in GM overhead. Alternately, you could maybe figure out a way to shift some of the imagining of advantages and disadvantages to the players.
Combat is lethal, fast, rather more abstract than D20 systems, and a tad confusing to us still. In combat the advantage/disadvantage system is more regularized, with specific bonuses for advantage and specific penalties for disadvantage, so it doesn't put as much strain on the DM's imagination, but it correspondingly doesn't add as much to the game. One thing I like is an emphasis placed on the potential for permanent and semipermanent injury, which is something most systems don't handle well.
Another system I do like is the game's 'Obligation' mechanic, which bakes character motivation into the character generation system and into the storyline construction system. Every session a percentile die is rolled to determine which character's obligation will play a role in driving this session's story. Players can use obligation also as a sort of currency, adding more obligation in exchange for benefits like extra experience or extra money. I like it usually when chargen helps steer your character in the direction that will make the game most fun and tension-filled, rather than merely creating your blank-slate of numbers.
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