it's all in the flavor
You have to get the flavor right -- but it works really really well if you do. It's an excellent system for swashbuckling types of games. Don't be afraid to let PCs take enormously high skills in a few things. It won't matter, since if done properly, combat isn't a challenge in this game. Either you completely outclass the opposition, the opposition completely outclasses you, or you figure out a way to defeat them without a head-on battle.
I wrote a wonderful scenario for Elric! called the Jade Citadel, which had the PCs as actor/troubadors/sellswords come to provide entertainment (for silver) in a city-wide birthday party for a southern king. From there it went to a mysterious beautiful stranger in some sort of peril, to an invitation to perform for powerful wizards in the service of Chaos (for gold), to a kidnapping-and-sailing-as-prisoners-to-a-lost-island-on-which-a-trapped-huge-metal-entity-of-law-is-rusting, to a rafting escape to the Isle of Purple Towns, to stealing a floating metal 10' cube from a temple of Law with the help of a master thief, to liberating the entity of law and sailing to a climactic tear-the-citadel-down-cast-of-thousands-and-cloud-of-carnivorous-demon-bat-bird-things-followed-by-rain-of-fire end battle. Then the PCs found the heart of Arioch in the ruins, and things got subtle and interesting after that. But I digress.
Anyway, it's all in the flavor. Read Moorcocks books. Games work very well when PCs have to think and talk their way through challenges, and they understand that most fights are only intended for flavor, not as a challenge. The ideal game in my mind is one in which the PCs meet strange and memorable characters in unusual circumstances, slowly get enmeshed in some evil machination that is way bigger than they can deal with alone, find strange and memorable allies to help them, and unleash a monsterous big confrontation at the end. And sailing -- there has to be a lot of sailing.
Reason