Shadowrun has a massive fan base it's been around for a long time, over 20 years. It is into its 5th Ed. It will be around for a very long time to come.
When I started playing D&D in the 1980's we did not use battle mats, just our imagination.
I have played 1-3rd Ed Shadowrun and I am going to buy 5th Ed.
Shadowrun is just as easy to put on a battle mat as Pathfinder just use the Hex side.
We used to call it the bucket o'dice game but then again there is something very satisfying about rolling a fist full of dice.
Combat is fast, deadly and wounds effect your abilities and skills.
It has a very different feel to D&D/Pathfinder. Shadowrun combat can get deadly fast, and can be a little more complicated in some ways, while being simpler in others. That said, as 8th pointed out, rolling a fist full of dice is very satisfying. It's the same reason I miss the World of Darkness campaign I was playing in as a dapper tophat wearing werewolf, who had to roll upwards of 30 dice every time he fired his gun. Overkill, pfft. No such thing.
I've played (mostly GMed) a bunch of shadowrun (only a few sessions of 5e). There are a ton of things I love about the game- setting, grittiness, characters you can create, types of adventures you play/run.
However, it is not a simple game. The core mechanic is fairly simple, but the game has a lot of complicated subsystems (magic, hacking, rigging/vehicle rules etc...). The subsystems follow the core mechanic, but there is a lot to digest and remember. Part of the complexity is because they try to be somewhat simulationist in their rules design. Part of the complexity is inherent in trying to create a system that captures the feel of a near future world (with magic added in).
Combat takes some getting used to. Initiative tracking is more complex than most games since you roll initiative each round and each round is sub-divided into initiative passes, so that characters with jacked up reflexes (via cyberware or magic) can act more times in a round than a regular joe. It has the potential to be slow, except that enemies (and PCs) can go down pretty quick, so you won't normally find yourselves grinding away at a single foe for any extended period. Enemies need to be taken down quick or they can potentially take you down quick.
There are a lot of tests in combat. For example to resolve shooting someone you would roll a test to hit them, they would roll a defence test. The amount of successes the attacker achieves increases the damage. Then the person getting shot rolls a test to reduce damage using his body score and armor to determine the dice pool. This takes more time than just an attack and damage roll, but it's not too bad once you get used to it.
Dice pools can get big (15+ dice is common in 4e and 5e), so a dice roller app (easily found for free for android or apple) is highly recommended- especially to help keep combat moving. Keep in mind there's no adding you just need to look for 5s and 6s and count the number of hits you get, so it's not that cumbersome (especially with a dice roller app).
I use maps/diagrams for combat when possible. I don't usually bother to draw out a battle map, but I like the players to have a sense of where they are in relation to their opponents and what things are around them, and I find that having some sort of visual is usually necessary. However, in shadowrun you aren't going to have "set piece" combat encounters the way you might in a D&D game. For instance, my shadowrun games don't really have "boss fights" like my D&D games would. In fact, how I gm a Shadowrun game is quite a bit different than how I'd GM a shadowrun game, which is in part due to the setting and in part due to the differences in the mechanics of the two systems. For example, Shadowrun adventures are pretty much always event based- though you can sort of have "dungeon crawl" if the characters are raiding a corporate research lab or something similar. I prefer to run more investigative scenarios.
Other random thoughts:
Characters have to be smart about things and plan or they can easily get totally f$&~ed- this is a part of the game I really like.
You have a health tracker, which doesn't really improve significantly as your character gain experience, so guns are always dangerous to your character.
It is a skill based system not a class based game-overall this is something I like, though I also enjoy class based games. Character advancement is free-form. For example you use xp/karma you earn to improve individual skills and attributes.
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I started gaming around 1989-1990 and purchased copies of both AD&D2E and Shadowrun 2E so I've been playing Shadowrun for a long time and it remains one of my all time favorite games and the updates that came with 4E and have carried over to 5E are great.
I don't feel that the game system is complicated since it has a simple core mechanic and everything functions the same. From a system mastery standpoint, if you can shoot a gun you can sling a spell or hack a computer. Unlike games like Pathfinder where you need to know a different aspect of the rules to implement spells everything functions the same. That being said there is a lot of nuance to the tech and magic available to the characters that requires some experience to understand and this is where the complexity comes into the game. However, the game offers premade characters they call 'archetypes' that I STRONGLY recommend you make use of until you have played the game a few times and get how things like cyberware, spells, and augmented reality effect the game.
On the Catalyst Game labs website you can get quick start rules for free that will get you and your friends into playing quickly and easily. I recommend starting there even if you get a copy of the core rulebook.
I was looking into it quite the same as you are. It is good to note that Shadowrun supports a live campaign like PFS, so that may help you as well. What I didn't like was that a lot of the rules and regulations are almost cut and paste from PFS, which may or may not have been intentional.
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You're gonna be a busy guy trying all these new RPGs ;)
Take my opinions with a massive grain of salt because I havent run or played Shadowrun since 3rd ed. But my group and I loved that game to pieces back in highschool and then in college through today I havent been able to find folks who will play it and I figured out why. Back when I ran Shadowrun I found the rules a little clunky for the high speed, fast paced, Die Hard style action sets that we craved out of the admitedly fantastic setting. I found that I often streamlined bits of the rules to really kick up the high octane action and increase the pace of the game.
Also things like Decking and the Matrix while awesome if everyone is playing one are really boring for the rest of the party if the decker has a whole side quest right in the middle of a session.
I found that for the majority of a session I would run the deckers sort of like Rogues in D&D where they would roll and that was that if it was something simple like bypassing a security door. Then when we got to something like a boss fight, the decker often would have a more complicated hack to make and I would run that in parallel to the boss fight to give them all something special to do within the Run. The Decker would still get his special Matrix time, but it didnt keep the rest of the party standing in a hallway somewhere twiddling thumbs and making sandwitches.
The third thing that I think helped is that while Shadowrun is a fantastic setting full of tons of great stuff a lot of folks run struggle to come up with over arching campaigns, plots etc.. It's very easy to fall into the "run of the week" routine. Be wary of that and try to change it up after a few sessions. Just like any RPG an over arching plot, changing set pieces and flexiblity in what your party will do are key. One of our best times was a campaign where the party started out primarily as car thieves ala grand theft auto and at that time there werent even rules for car chases in the game....
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Yeah decking was an issue in 1E-3E where if the decker jacked into the matrix everyone else was left sitting around. The game got a major overhaul with 4E that fixed that. For the first time deckers became viable members of the team again. 5E isn't that different from 4E, they just streamlined a few things really.
The game does come off very complicated seeming and it's not a great game for people new to RPGs, which is probably the biggest fault I see with the game. I am a rabid fan and encourage you to give it a try.
I've often thought of Shadowrun as a game that seems purpose built for multiple GMs. One to run the main part of the game, the other to take over when Astral travel or hacking became important. 4th Edition did go a long way towards resolving this, but it still seems like it'd make things a bit easier.
