I hate the plot premise. Specifically, I think it's braindead stupid.

Watership Down, which realistically portrays rabbits, is AWESOME. Its stated goal was to write about rabbits in a fantastical way that was consistent with actual contemporary knowledge.

Rescue Rangers is very good. It's a cartoon about imaginary friends and their enemies coexisting with real humans. They are rodents, so they scavenge and build awesome stuff out of junk. (Compare and contrast: Toy Story.)

Fables, allegories, etc: animals are caricatures. Animal traits are used to very quickly establish a stereotype. E.g. in a typical Russian folktale, there's a bunch of animals living in the woods. The Bear is slow and usually calm but terrifying in anger, the Wolf is aggressive and evil but dumb, the Fox is clever and yes, sexy, the Hare is weak and therefore cowardly but with occasional flashes of daring and inspiration. The animals stand for stereotypical people in a micro-society. There isn't a tribe or a nation of hares, there's just that one allegorical cowardly person. He's not meant to develop traits not consistent with the stereotype, the whole point of featuring animals is to tell a story about established characters as economically as possible.

I know of one way to make civilizations of antropomorphic animals sort of work: having the technology and the social structure of the civilization in question be heavily influenced by the biology of the base species. Looking at the Wikipedia page, it's very obvious this is not what happens in this game. That leaves two other possibilities. Having a person's character be strongly associated with their race, however fantastical, is racism. Having human bodies with animal heads walking about "just because" is pointless dehumanization. Finally, "humans have gone extinct and were succeeded by furries who have magic and battle robot suits and live forever in a sparkly magical world" is a very specific premise apparently popular in the irrational (read: completely buglove insane) segment of the furry fandom. I find this premise absolutely unacceptable and highly offensive.

And this is why I consider the game bad. I don't need to play it to have an informed opinion. Of course, it may happen that the information in Wikipedia and the linked article is completely false and the game is about something else entirely, but that's a chance so minuscule that I can afford to dismiss it. Humans get a *lot* of information secondhand, and I don't see enough (or, in fact, any) contradictory evidence OR have sufficient motivation to make an exception this time.

... have you even watched the show? Imaginary friends? What?

How can you dismiss something like Solatorobo when you don't even care to learn what a show you're taking of is about?

So your criticism is more towards the structure and world building, which is done in ways you find distateful, fair enough. I was focusing more on things like "how it plays", when I played it I certainly did not dwell on those aspects, focusing more on the next platforming/combat section, which was pretty entertaining. It reminded me quite a bit of Mischief Makers, which was a rather enjoyable title. Fair enough! I certainly was not defending the worldbuilding in it.

I must say that having the plausibility of the worldbuilding being a decisive factor is not something one encounters every day!

Yes. Stop throwing around baseless accusations. It's a show about human-intelligent little furry critters who coexist with humanity, scavenge scrap, build awesome stuff, get into trouble, get out of it, and help people - often kids - in trouble. A person can live in the real world and (being a little kid) believe the Rescue Rangers are real and around (unlike Superman, who probably lives elsewhere, and sparkly furries on floating islands, who are fictional, because humans are still alive and there are no floating islands).

The fact that the characters are small animals (albeit hyperintelligent and clothes-wearing) that actually exist matters for the plot, the theme, and the characterization. You can't make them angels, or gargoyles, or gnomes and expect the plot, theme and characterization fit together. If they were human-sized, they wouldn't have to invent crazy Rube Goldberg machines to do mundane stuff; awesomeness wouldn't be personal, and personal stories wouldn't be awesome. As small rodents, they have a reason to live in proximity to humans and scavenge scrap; gnomes, being wholly fictional, have no attachment to humans and are free to live in their secret gnome kingdom fighting off Gargamel or whatever. And they have to be fairly antropomorphized, too, because RL mice don't build airships out of discarded plastic bottles. That's how it fits together. That's why intelligent scavenger rodents are awesome and ever-young sparkly magical furries piloting battle robots are not awesome, and never will be.

Now, a quote dump (censored to conform to GOG standards, sorry):

See, here's the problem with your post. You used "imaginary friend" incorrectly.

An "imaginary friend", in English, is used to describe a child's non-existing friend he plays with. By using that phrase in that manner, you changed the whole concept of the show from "animals who help kids" into "a child's imaginary adventures about his non-existing friends."

I'm just going to go to higher ground before the next flood of words shows up, thank you.

Mario IS furry!

Not to mention his big black furry... mustache.

Finally, we agree on something.

Edit: Also Albion.

You're trying to pass off something subjective as objective. What makes something Awesome is subjective, I fine Magical furries in giant robots awesome and therefore true to me, therefore it's subjective.

As for that quote: Science has never disproved reincarnation, That is the realm of metaphysics and Science has yet to prove or disprove anything of them, it's up to metaphysical debate.

Most of these things can't be disproved. :3

I'm going to regret bumping this, but...

I'm not going to give my opinion on the subculture everyone's afraid (or defensive) of. But I do find this hostility towards a thing about people with animal heads because of some pedantic theory that it's bad writing, or because someone somewhere is jerking off to it, to be ridiculous.

I'm tempted to believe it's all because it's a Roman5 thread.