With regard to the Data Trails criticism, there is a persistent problem in at least most cyberpunk type games between wanting to make hacking dynamic, dramatic, and immediate, versus realistic. SR has the added burden that its first edition pre-dated the world wide web by a few years and ubiquitous wireless devices by closer to two decades.
In 4th and 5th editions SR made efforts to bring the matrix into a form that is less unbelievable (i.e. not behind where we are now), while making hacking something you do while part of the party, as opposed to the old stereotype of the GM and hacker playing through that part of things while everyone else went to get pizza, then everyone else getting to do their thing while the hacker character played video games. I think they’ve done a semi-decent job with the play style issue, but a lot of people find the new matrix is simultaneously jarring because it is so different from what was in older editions, but still not believable. In Data Trails they kind of doubled down, putting in some cool new stuff for hacker types to experience and explore, while really straining the suspension of disbelief for some people.
(Personally, if I’m accepting trolls with fireballs flying out of their fingers, and an economy where shadowrunners are integral to how things work, accepting the matrix doesn’t really bother me. But perhaps because we actually have experience with computers and networks, a lot of people seem to want it to make sense based on what they know)
As for the combat scene, I think the answer if very much “it depends.” There are sufficient tactical and strategic options in SR that a combat can play out in very many different ways. If everyone grabs cover and uses full defense and neither side has a real superiority in magic or drones, then it could drag out for quite a while. Meanwhile one big fireball might end it almost instantly. What you tend not to have is situations where one side has the clear advantage, but it just takes a lot of back and forth rolls to whittle the other side down—at least compared to a lot of other game systems. Combat can be pretty dynamic, at least if both sides put their minds to it.
Worth noting, perhaps, is that as each action can involve an attack roll, a defense roll, and a damage soak roll (and if it is a spell there will also be a drain soak test), each of which likely involves rolling 10+ dice and looking for the ones that come up five or six. In other words, the mechanics of the game are not especially speedy. On the other hand because the rolls pack a a fair bit of information (how many successes, is the roll a glitch, compared to a simple pass/fail or fumble/fail/succeed/crit scale), personally, I find the dice rolling a far more interesting part of SR than most games.
