Short version: get it.
Long version: We played a ton of it back in the day. Still probably our group's favorite RPG system.
There are a few things that I especially like about the system:
*Combat is brutal and gritty, though the right gear and/or high skill can reduce it considerably (though never totally) - even in a Body Tank, there's a chance the Mook with the Pistol with roll a 1 and knock you out.
*Buying advanced ranks in skills gives you mini special abilities related to those skills in addition to the normal benefit of having high rank (see below).
*The PL system is cool; subdividing the possible eras of play from Stone Age to Characters-As-Pure-Energy. It's best when played around PL6(near-future to complete exploration of the solar system) or PL7(early FTL), though PL8 is also decent (Space Opera galactic-scale).
It's relatively "real-fi" vs "fantasy-fi".
Character creation is fairly involved, with a selection of attributes similar to D&D (even a conversion table included in the back of the book), Broad, and Sub-skills. You use d20s, d12s, d8s, d6s, and d4s as modifiers to a base d20.
It uses a roll-under system, with possible results of Amazing(Natural 1 is always this), Good, Ordinary, Failure, and Critical Failure(Natural 20). There is a step chart from +2d20 penalty at the worst to -d20 bonus at the best, with bonuses moving up the chart and penalties moving down.
Almost everything you do is a skill, with skills subdivided first by the associated stat, then into Broad Skills, then sub-Skills of those Broad skills. Sub-skills cannot be purchased until the related Broad Skill is purchased and each skill can be purchased up to 9 times. Figuring out your skill is Stat + Skill Ranks = Ordinary Success, half rounding down is Good, half Good rounding down is Amazing.
Example: A soldier has 12 Strength, the Broad Skill Melee Weapons, and the Sub-skill Blade at 3 ranks. His skill with Blades would be 15/7/3. If he rolls and gets above 16, it's a Failure, 8-15 is a Ordinary success, 4-7 is a Good success, 1-3 is an Amazing success.
There are four classes(Free-Agent, Combat Spec, Tech Op, and Diplomat) with one additional class if you are using Psionics(Mindwalker). The main benefit of the classes is giving you xp cost reductions to purchase related skills, though each has a sub bonus or two as well:
*Free Agents get a bonus to a resistance (making it harder to shoot, punch, intimidate, or mind-control them)
*Combat Specs get a bonus to a specific combat Broad Skill
*Tech Ops get more xp points to spend on skills when they level
*Diplomats get the skill reductions of their class and one of their choice.
I would recommend rolling stats once you have a degree of system mastery, otherwise all your players will end up just buying up Int and their primary skill stat and all look kinda the same.
It's got some expansion books that are all pretty high quality and the Star*Drive campaign setting that's the default associated background is pretty cool, though we very rarely use per-established settings in any system that allows homebrew (I.E. not Star Wars, WH40K/WHFR, or Exalted).
If you have any other questions, we have at least one copy of all the books here and have played a few long-term campaigns and dozens of one-offs in the system.
