Bear in mind with a specific pistol skill of 7, plus four levels of Improved Pistols, we're rolling 11 dice before combat pool. I've only seen one character do that in a Shadowrun game, and I never saw him shoot at someone and not kill them outright. And bearing in mind the amount of use it gets in the film, a Katana skill of 5 isn't too underpowered- he's good, but it's not his primary focus (the katana was a dress weapon after all). For close combat he has the pistols, where you're looking at 11 dice again before combat pool if he's fully ambidextrous, and IIRC Kali allows you to take maneuvers for clubs- close combat, I believe.
Sure, he's not quite as much of a god-killer as Preston is at the end of the film, but he'd been earning and spending karma by then. He should keep pace with the initial Preston.

-JH.

While Improved Ability affects the game in the same fashion as Skill, it is not considered a Skill. Regardless, the character of Preston most definitely had a minimum base skill rating of 8 in all of his Combat Skills in addtiion to maxed out Improved Ability in those same skills. That's 16 dice each, easy. He completely oblitered an entire group of fellow Tetra-Grammaton Clerics with ease, one blow per Cleric. In melee combat. That means he scored a minimum of 8 net successes over each opponent, of which he attacked using Multi-Strike at least six times (so he was countering at least a +6 to +12 TN modifier with his Centering Skill).

The "initial Preston" wasn't much different. He stood in the middle of a group of opponents weilding full-auto weapons using suppressive fire (which ignores penalties for darkness, mind you) and he didn't get so much as a scratch. Not much later, he took out an entire group of highly-trained officers in heavy armor like they didn't exist at all. The difference between the "two Prestons" was minimal; he was a god from the start.

Like I said, creating a Tetra-Grammaton Cleric is easy to do with starting characters. Creating Preston is closer to creating Harlequinn with the character creation rules -- it's just not going to happen.

Enhanced Aim 4 is far from being better than a smartlink. In order for that -2 to not simply be countered by the penalty for sustaining a spell, you would need to either quicken it (which takes lots of karma to gain the technique, use it, and guard it against dispelling) or get a sustaining focus (which costs either 60,000 or 120,000 depending on whether you get it during chargen).

Aside from the drastic increase in cost to make it effective, opponents you try to shoot at with enhanced aim actually get resistance checks, since, yaknow, its a detection spell and they're being unwillingly affected by it. So there are no guarantees concerning its effectiveness at all.

Enhanced Aim has a pathetically short range and is a sustained spell/effect so as an adept power it can't be used with a Sustaining Focus (thus you need it at at least Force 8 to duplicate the -2 modifier a smartlink provides).

If instead you mean you simply used the spell, then you'd have to have a Sustaining Focus and someone who not only knew the spell but was willing to recast it for you each and everything you had to deactivate it when you went through a ward or the like (not to mention score all 4 successes you'd need on that TN of 6 each and every time).

Kali is a variant name for one of the Martial Arts skills in Cannon Companion.

Dont make my angry. You wont like it when Im angry...

Never said otherwise. But like Fortune said, most people don't bother. Sadly, they don't bother with geasa or fetishes, either, unless it's to offset magic loss. Pity.

Second That.