What you see as a flaw I see a fundamental part of the setting: Rich people have nicer things and the poor suffer.
This is an area I think Red could have explored a bit better. But on the other hand I don't know if I really want to keep track of Humanity like I would in Vampire.
I'm leaning towards your point of view here. There's a style skill that I really really understand what it does from a mechanical point of view and that drives me crazy. So the character is good at looking fashionably appropriate, great. What does that mean for game play? Or having separate skills for rifle, handgun, heavy weapons, and then tacking on another skill for firing automatic weapons.
I'm with you on this one too. I actually like the corps being less powerful.
I haven't gotten there yet but now I'm looking forward to reading it.
Re: rich people, I think I'm not conveying the issue correctly. Rich people should have nicer cyberware, but it's antithetical to the cyberpunk setting if rich people are "more human" whilst being equally cybered-up to everyone else. There are basically two ways to go with rich people in a cyberpunk setting - the first is they're also cybered-up and everything is cut-throat as hell at the top, and whilst they may act more human superficially, they're just actually worse and less human/humane than the 'punks, especially given everyone they're crushing beneath their orbital crystal heels. The second is that they have escaped the rat-race entirely and live in some kind of unaugmented utopian state which is protected from the dystopian state. This is a common concept in 1980s manga stuff that touches on cyberpunk ideas. Likely the police and so on exist basically to maintain this utopia/dystopia distinction (Appleseed isn't quite there but it's not far off).
So I think they should have their therapy and so on, but it should merely change the expression of their lack of humanity, and the obviousness of it. I feel like it's a missed opportunity, but easy enough to fix.
re: Humanity yeah I feel you re: VtM-style humanity, it would change the focus... and yet... and yet... that kind of is more appropriate to the genre in a lot of ways. I guess it's something I'll think on.
re: System, it's like, this is 2021, we have all sorts of amazing rules-light and rules-medium systems, where we use rules-heavy systems it's because they provide really strong gameplay or the like. Red doesn't manage any of these. System-wise it's just a better-written and more elegant version of the old FUZION rules, more complicated-feeling than 2020 (outside of combat) and so much less complex inside of combat that it makes you wonder why not just use a rules-medium or rules-light game with the same setting?
The lack of individualism in the guns and bits of cyberware and so on seems like it's missing what made 2020 and Shadowrun different to later, more generic cyberpunk games, so you're kind of getting the worst of both worlds. The generic approach to equipment of rules-light cyberpunk stuff combined with enough rules to make things fiddly.
re: Adventure - hah! You'll know it's the one I mean because it involves loggers...
It's been a long, long while since I've run a Cyberpunk/Shadowrun type of game. But one thing I noticed, or at least it was my perception, is that not only it was very difficult for edge runners to eek out a living it often cost more to go on a run after you calculate medical care, ammunition expenditure, lost equipment, etc., etc.
In Red, to afford a Generic Prepak lifestyle and live in a studio apartment it comes out to 1,800 euros (eb). I picked this combination as it's the lowest level a PCs can pay for and have a relatively safe place to sleep, stow their gear, and their vehicles are less likely to get messed with. The pay for a typical job breaks down as follows:
Easy: 500 eb - Armed resistance not expected.
Typical: 1000 eb - Armed resistance expected but you can prepare for it.
Dangerous: 2000 eb - Armed resistance overwhelming.
So in a given month, if nothing goes wrong, a character can live a fairly comfortable life by working two typical jobs in a month or one typical job and two easy jobs. It's probably not healthy to take a dangerous job very often. But it's still not easy to actually get ahead. Of course there's always the possibility of a big score at some point.
This is actually a really big problem with most editions of Shadowrun and it's sad that Red added to the problem instead of working out a new approach.
The issue is, people aren't going to risk their lives the way the PCs are asked to, for that little pay, and no expenses. Not even in the settings Shadowrun and Red outline.
Why? Because you could do a naughty word "straight" job and live in the same conditions. People don't become criminals and engage in dangerous stuff because they can make the same money as working at McDonalds. This is incredibly clear from y'know, all of human history. Especially the 20th century and beyond. People become criminals and engage in dangerous stuff because they can, and do, make 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 times as much money as a criminal, as they could as a straight job. You can look at the history of drug-dealing to see this.
Shadowrun danced with trying to justify this by having the players be SINless and thus unable to get a straight job, but as the setting broadened out, that didn't really work, and they largely forgot about it.
The players aren't, in Shadowrun or Red, completely useless gutter-punks either. Even with the normal starts, they're relatively well-equipped and well-trained and each worth several dumb punks in combat terms. You couldn't pay someone like that bottom-dollar.
You mention that selling equipment can make a nice sideline, but it's more like, in both SR and Red, because of how ludicrously un-generous the money is, that becomes the main source of income, which is fine if the game is intended to focus on that, but typically it isn't. This is much discussed in Shadowrun, because at least in a couple of editions, there were formal rules and they ended up making it so if you wanted to get rich in SR, doing shadowruns was a sucker's job - poor pay and often ripped off on even that. Stealing cars though? That was big money, according to the rules. Even if you give PCs pennies on the Nuyen, as it were, it's much more valuable to basically steal everything that isn't nailed down (especially cars and all cyberware) in early SR. The only long-term solution is to pay PCs a more reasonable amount.
Basically what you really want is rules that make money easy-come easy-go. PCs should be paid a lot more, but want to spend a lot more, and that spending should be constant.