>>6443875You're asking an honest question, and I'll give an honest answer, even if it breaks your "barring aesthetic gripes" rule, since that's.. exactly my main issue with him.
To play by your rules first though; too many panels and pegs that come loose when trying to pose him, on shoulders / calves / ribs. Definitely not a dealbreaker for most or even me since I stomach the issues with Gravity Builder just fine.
But then there's the look. I admit, he actually looks solid as a combiner, but the color scheme rolling with the goofy arm-kibble appearance is just painful. Part of me adores how the ambulamps arm looks almost like armor, but given it's not matching on the other side in any real poses (notable when you try to make him flex or point, as the ambulance starts to unhinge to allow it), it's.. offputting.
Then there's what really breaks it for me; the "ehn" robot modes. Only amazing one is (like most combiner sets) the body, the rest are mediocre sans the garbage motorcycle.
Vehicle modes are fine, they knock it out of the park.
When I compare it to Rex though, Rex does fantastic in 2/3 of the modes, and the worst is their alt modes, which is still pretty solid for the most part. I like that the mold reuse gives a degree of uniformity, and the worst complaint I have about Rex is that his range of elbow motion is somewhat limited, although it can apparently be rectified with a modification, but it's not a big improvement.
The only combiners worth bringing up are Gravity Builder, Poseidon, Rex, and Constructor. Maketoys does some fantastic stuff, but sadly they picked a bad combiner (aesthetically) to put work in to, as Defensor isn't popular, visually interesting, or sporting an appealing theme (WEW RESCUE VEHICLES). Compare that to the other popular choices and it's not hard to see why they're lauded as such.
I'll apologize and point out I was wrong when I said it was objectively worse, with regards to combined mode. Definitely not in all modes, though.
