I think you point out the issues between melee and range. Melee should be more effective, but at the cost of having to close the distance and often not having cover.On balance, I'm not too sure what's the point of Unarmed. I mean first off it's only viable if you use Chi to get Killer Hands(that's the first point though so you can get that easily but if you get a ton of cyberware the cooldown becomes noticeably longer than the duration so it's kinda messed up). Other than that it gets the exact same skills as melee weapons and doesn't seem to do as much damage so that's like weird.
Melee weapons so far are pretty strong. I use Katanas because they create AP loss so they double as disable for tougher enemies, as every hit pretty much removes AP. The AoE move is also pretty nice since it drains AP in an AoE so you can CC a bunch of shit at once, as long as you have high str/melee so you don't get weak hits or misses. You can instead increase your damage by 4 by using a non AP removing weapon(+1) and Thrust instead of Slash(+3, no AP removal, -15% accuracy which you make up by using Aim). This is nice when you want to kill stuff faster. With Haste my melee has no problem killing mobs in one round, generally can charge across the room and beat down a caster before they get to move easily. So far none of the ranged chars I got to use as mercs came close to that damage potential, but they don't have to be in melee range which has some implications if you're trying to aoe shit. Also out of cover a lot but I got some points in Chi to get the magic resistance buff in case of(while the cooldown is super long due to cyberware, it's fine because it lasts 4rounds so that's good enough to kill everything usually).
One thing I didn't get, Shamans can use Traps, like Wind traps or lightning traps or whatever, it's spells you get to drop in a formation on the ground. However it seems mobs can run through them and not take any damage, so I don't really get what's the point. It also says they're cover but you don't get cover indicators when standing next to them. Are they only supposed to do anything if the mob stands right inside them? Do they only provide cover for people standing inside them and taking dmg? Seems weird.
Unarmed is only really supposed to be handy for Adepts or as a backup I guess.
I think the issue is it isn't clear if an Adept can stand on its own compared to a melee samurai with cyberware. They're supposed to be, but this system is a bit quirky so not sure.
The shaman wall/trap things should penalize people going through them, but not always damage.