Have a chance to play, but don't know the first thing about it. Please enlighten...
well, when i played it was always crazy fun... laregely because the GM we played with always let us make characters with a whole lot of points. ;)
you know, the sort of characters who could dance upon a hail of bullets, and such like that.
fu shticks, yo, fu shticks.
It is insanely fun.
the problems lie almost entirely with the Character Generation, which is based on templates that are in no way balance with one another (ie, you can be the Character with 3 Kung Fu Powers, or the Character with 5 Kung Fu powers etc)
It is a game that is fun in spite of certain elements it posseses.
But it is a blast to play. It is where the "Stunting" rules of Exalted came from...the cooler you describe an action, the better a chance you have of it working.
The setting is very "Wahoo" and very, very fun: Assassins from the future, Eunuch Sorcerors, Abominations, Cyborg Gorillas, Shaolin Monks, Karate cops...all are viable PC's:)
I recently ran a short campaign of it while it is a fun light hearted game that reflects the genre well, the problems we had were....
1) Karate Cop complained as he gets no Fu shticks. (Fu shticks really reflect the over the top mystical martial arts so I suppose it makes sense that the archetype does get them, but still he felt short changed) Archetypes aren't always balanced but it's hard to make comparisons
2) Killer taking snap shot, with his Carnival of Carnage, Lightening Reload x3 and 10,000 Bullets, could take down 2 mooks every shot. This occasionally ment that all the mooks were dead before anyone elses initiative! The general feeling was Gun shticks far outclassed Fu shticks most of the time. And while this is reflected in the XP cost, since the Killer and others started off with so many XP didn't really matter.
3) Sorcerer focused all his XP improving magic, as did one of the Martial Artist improving Fu, soon they just couldn't be hit. While other characters the spread XP more widely couldn't hit things that were put in to challenge those two characters. This is due to the really tight range of results, unless dice explode, meaning if you get a action value of only 2 or 3 better than someone then you are always likely to hit them and they are never going to hit you. (Especially if you abort to an active dodge)
If it's played for laughs then this arn't too much of a problem, but if your use to D20 and balance between character classes then you might start pull you hair out after a few weeks of play.
Yeah, an extended campaign can run into balance issues unless the ref is careful about how the players spend xp. It can also be difficult to find an archtype that's exactly like the character you want to play
Other than that, it's a near-perfect light-hearted game. I usually wave the penalty for Stunting if the stunt is described cooly enough
Feng Shui is nearly a perfect convention game, as long as you put enough details on the character sheets so that folks know how to use their special abilities. It's a lot of fun, and people love coming up with funky stunts. It's also got one of the most fun rulebooks to read - the gun list nearly always makes me laugh at the descriptions.
It's great for one shots and convention games. The problems I had with it were:
* As others have said, the archetypes are unbalanced.
* The initiative system lets fast guys take 2 or 3 actions before slower PCs take their 1, measly action.
* All the schticks can be a pain to keep track of.
Its strengths are:
* Easy task resolution.
* Great stunt system.
* Overall, the game really encourages creativity.
When I've played it, we've completely ignored initiative, wound penalties, and the schticks. Instead, people just describe stuff and roll. It's a lot more fun that way.
The saddest part for me, about the whole FS game was I just didn't like the whole meta setting. I wante Honk Kong action movie the RPG. And got this strange background that wasn't what I was looking for--but that was then.
I loved the system, while some archetypes were a little overpowered they tended to have their own problems if you followed some of the better advice I've seen for running games: The biggest baddest guy. Gets the biggest baddest enemies, who will call them out.
With relation to the issues that have been mentioned if you want to create an ongoing campaign it's important to know as a GM what sort of story you want to run and what sort of story your players expect. If you want to do hong kong action then have Killers and Karate Cops and Everyday Hero's as your characters, perhaps a bruiser. Don't allow Martial Artists and Ninja's in as players. If you want to set the game in the past similar rules apply. You don't need to use the meta game to have fun with Feng Shui. It's entirely possible to pick one setting and just play in it, then if that gets exhausted let them in on the meta game, the advantage is that since all characters were created equal they'll stay equal.
If you are planning the meta game from the beginning and want to allow for all sorts of character types then as a GM you need to strongly play the the campaign to the various character strengths. Which can be tough given the wide range of potential characters. Also keep in mind that mooks are just that mooks. They are supposed to fall over in droves. So have the killer mow them down while the Ninja and the Ancient master move in to take out the named characters. While the Martial Arts expert runs up a stream of bullets laid down by the Abomination to get to the upper level where the Eunich lays in wait.