The dice system probably can be compared to WoD a bit, though it has smaller dice but bigger dicepools.
There's no classes perse, but there's different character types and within those there's still quite a bit of variation space. For example, a non-magical Street Samurai can be more of a Tank, use Cyberarms for big punches, ware up light and focus on being sneaky, and anything inbetween.
There's 5 types of spells, which then split into different subtypes. You basically got the mental and elemental attack spells, mental and physical illusions, mental and physical manipulations (brainwashing and messing things up), buff and debuff spells, and various kinds of detection spells. In each type there's several different spells, each with their own use, so there's a lot of things to choose between and ways to work out a mage. On top of that there's Summoning Spirits and perhaps Binding them for more and longer services (at a price), Rituals and even preparing Alchemic Preparations in advance.
The story is basically whatever you make of it. Some campaigns focus on the street, others on corporate espionage, and more. The general tendency of a run is "you get hired, investigate, make a plan, go in and try to survive the problems that pop up and mistakes you make", but leaving aside runs that go differently there's still plenty of difference between runs that follow that setup.
Most of the gameplay is abstract, just like with D&D you wouldn't have a map of every place where you might talk with people. Some people use maps for combat, if you want something easy to work with I'd consider a Chessex Play Mat for drawing the map on when needed, so players got an inking of the distances and where to dive for cover.
http://www.chessex.com/mats/Battlemats_&_Megamats.htmThe beginner's box is in development, they're getting them ready right now and once they get them in their warehouses they'll announce when they expect the stores to have them.
