I like it, still reading through it!
I don't know why people think karmagen is bad for new players. It's true that it's a system that works a lot better in a video game than a board game, but tools like chummer can alleviate that. The priority system made sense back in the 90s when computers weren't really part of the TTRPG experience.
SR has a crap ton of splatbooks with weird rules in them. I think D&D 3e had the same issue, though maybe it was more clear: I don't think anyone ever ran D&D 3e using all the rules in Unearthed Arcana. Even as a joke. A major mistake I made in running my first 5e campaign was not specifying to the players (Who were also new) what books we'd be using, and not doing the research on those books