To me, RAN falls into the same category as ESP: regardless of how well you do it, it´s still a ripoff.
IMO any company that´s not capable of creating their own design, regardless of whether it´s "good" or "bad", should not be in the business of building new guitars.
Seriously, the only reason RAN is still in business at all is that US trademarks aren´t enforceable over here, otherwise JCMI and Gibson would have sued them into the ground already, and rightly so....