So tell me what is so special about Star Wars Saga Edition?

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

natural 20 is an automaci critical = duh

A lot of people don't like this. However, there are numerous benefits to it. First, it keeps mooks dangerous in that they'll be able to hit heroes and, potentially, cause a CT step.

What people usually forget to take into account is that a mook with a blaster pistol will crit on a 20, doing (3d6)x2 damage, or roughly 21.0 damage on an average crit.

A 10th-level PC will be doing (3d6+5) damage on a normal hit, or 15.5 damage on a normal shot.

So, mooks hit when they hurt, yes, but Heroes do roughly equivalent damage all the time. Or, in other words, a high-level PC does the equivalent of a mook-critical every time he hits, leaving aside any cool talents or other abilities.

no 5ft. step = duh duh
...
withdraw is a move action = WTF?

These two quite obviously tie together.

diagonal movement is 2-2-2-2 = that's because too many kids play it and can't do advanced math.

WizO_the_Hutt, AKA Gary Sarli, has addressed this one specifically. Basically, the rule is there to make the counting easier and conform to the minis game's method of counting. Moreover, he (and the team) wrote that rule with the knowledge that anyone who'd been playing D&D / d20 for any length of time would immediately house-rule it back to 1-2-1-2.

charge is a standard action = what?

Why is this an issue? The "partial charge" exists in D&D already, but is only available if you're limited to a standard action each round.

Besides, charge as a standard action allows you to Mighty Swing and charge, and that's a nice-to-have.

no iterative attacks, but charatcter can buy feats to get extra attack so it's basically trading 6 for half-dozen.

the focus is on ranged attacks, since full melee attacks are very rare to occur.

Agreed - but the feats are weapon specific. So, if you learn Double Attack (Lightsabers), it does not apply to your sniper rifle attacks.

Moreover, the designers have made a specific move in the Saga rules to disincentivize the Full Attack option in order to more closely conform to the source material (where everyone spends every combat running around).

That being said, multiattacks are better or worse depending on your environment: in a wide-open field, ranged multiple attacks are easy to pull off; in a tightly confined space with lots of difficult terrain, melee multiple attacks are easy to pull off.

second wind mechanic

Second Wind restores 1/4 of your HP or your Con score, whichever is more, not all of your HP.

There are no touch attacks.

Yep.

The way saga rules were presented make the game focus too much on cinematic roleplay, and I don't think that would fit too well in D&D.

I agree on the first, and partially agree on the second. I think aspects of Saga's rules would make excellent additions to D&D, but a whole-hog port would not work as well.

Paradoxically a good rule introduced in SAGA,that actually makes the combat slower and with more book keeping, is the damage treshold and condition track. Though it's one more number to take care in combat, it makes it a little more realistic, so I think it's a good call for D&D.

I also like the Condition Track mechanics.