I personally prefer RPGM type games, It's the engine I'm the most familiar with and the engine I enjoy making games with.
Most VNs are boring and like most amateur adult games look the same as most others. 3D games aren't exactly big winners for me either, they're too big with a lot of empty space and filled with bugs. Granted 3D is harder to make, but that doesn't make them any more enjoyable to slog through.
Although I like RPGM, that doesn't mean they're all perfect. Most are terrible and are either first attempts at a game or first attempts at a cash grab. From my experience this comes from being a lone dev with no help in testing or not getting any feedback whatsoever.
Another issue with RPGM is the constant nagging to be "More than an RPG" which trying to do in any of the RPGM is very difficult. I pushed the engine and created a type of gun gameplay for mine which took a few months of on and off work to get the basics functions and built on it slowly over the development of everything else. And even though it's in one of it's best states, it's still a little buggy. I also added in simple knife combat and only last month did I finally figure out how to add knife countering, so if you end up getting cornered a well timed knife attack will counter an enemies attack and make them back up giving you time to slip away. It all looks and sounds simple to pull off but it took me a long time to figure all of that out, it's honestly easier to use the simple, boring RPGM combat than to pull your hair out trying something unique.
You could just use turn based combat but it's also hard to make fun. Plugins are a MUST if you go this route because the base engine doesn't have a lot going for it. Still easier than making something unique.
I would also like to try and give an answer to a few points I've seen while reading through all of the comments.
However, one thing that surprised me on this site is how many developers are simply content with the bare minimum of presentation, like, I understand the porn and the gameplay are the most important things here, but when I see so many devs (especially RPGM devs) reusing the same default assets over and over again, I can't help but go... Would it kill them to at least change the defaut font? The default spritesheet for the environment and characters? I'm pretty sure if I googled it right now, I could find tons of free assets on Itch that would do the job perfectly fine.
While I'm not a "high-end graphics matter" kind of guy, presentation is important, and seeing all those asset flips gives me the impression these devs do not care whatsoever for their games, and that they're putting out the bare minimum to try and make bank, as futile as it is. Because that kind of shit can and already has turned off many people from these games, myself included. I've never touched games like Black Souls or Karryn's prison even though they seem to be highly regarded here, because they just repulse me due to how sick I am of seeing thes same-looking assets.
Yes you're right, there are a lot of free assets on Itch.io and other RPGM sites. The issue is the many different styles of those assets and more often than not that one artist with free assets and a eye catching style won't have everything you need for your very specific game your making or only half of their tilesets are free and you can't afford to buy the rest. Well not a problem, just buy a few asset packs from the shop and see what the RPGM sites have as they tend to mimic the default asset style pretty well, BUT your game will get called generic looking and lazy because the style looks the same as default. It's not a fun lol.
As for cash grab RPGM games, they won't put effort into anything. Just keep shoveling slop to make a handful of dollars and move on to the next slop. These games can sum up the asset flips you see so often, it's unfortunate. I'm just glad that selling 100% save files for these slop games never caught on. And yes some devs on DLsite did that and they cost almost as much as the game itself.
I'm a sucker for female protagonist games and most of them just happen to be RPGM games. I know what to expect from japanese games (even if they are not great) while western RPGM games often feel like they are going nowhere.
I agree. I'm not sure what it is with western RPGMs but they bore me too. The stories feel generic and made up as they go, which is a mistake I made doing the first half of development while japanese devs seem to have a clear cut vision of what they want the game to be, even if it's not good.
I think games made with RPG Maker have an advantage of superior story elements. Last sovereign, demon"s roots, tower of trample. These are certified classics. Because assets are mostly from engine and RPG Maker scripting is relatively easy, developers can focus on story and lore more.
I agree here as well. From experience scripting is easy but you'll have to google script calls more often than you like to admit. And even then, some people just can't be bothered to use RPGMs easy scripting because it "looks like it'll be hard". It's not hard at all but it something looks hard people just won't bother out of fear of potential frustration.
I'm totally neutral towards RPGM. My only gripe towards RPGM are some lazy developers who pad playing time with too frequent random combat. Peasant's Quest is a great example of good usage of RPGM (although it is somewhat guilty of "padding combat" from time to time).
I've seen that padding before. Most devs do that because their afraid the game is too short or they want to get you over a certain websites refund limit. A lot of devs don't understand that people will be far happier with a game that's short, fun and full of content rather than one that is dragged to hell and back to make it feel longer. (I'll admit I'm guilty of this as well)
The engine is not the problem, people are the problem. (c) Me and probably a whole lot of other wise people.
True. But what causes people to go down that path as I stated previously is the fear of potential future frustration so they choose the easier path instead. Or the game is just a cash grab with no effort, either or fits.
RPGM art sucks. I mean, the vanila art sucks. And it looks that it's diffucult to remove some mechanics, for example, games which there is only exploration have a combat system or a weapon / armor system empties.
The vanilla art isn't the best, I agree. Removing armor and weapons? Just untick the equip option so it won't be shown in the menu and don't add anything that requires weapon/armors. If you need certain items for puzzles it can all be done in the items menu or with a few simple events. (This is MV, perhaps other versions don't have this option? But I'd be willing to bet they do and are just not used.)
As for not having combat, even easier. Just leave the troop section blank on the map and don't add combat encounters.
If devs need an enemy of some kind, just add a chase enemy that if it touches you either gives you a game over or makes you start a sequence over (within reason)
All of the options are there, but maybe the dev wanted those things in the game or had bigger ideas that had to be down sized? I'm not sure, I would need to ask them directly for their thoughts.
The biggest issue I have with RPGM is the complete lack of quality-of-life settings. You can fullscreen some games, but the resolution is still surprisingly low without any way of increasing it. You can't screenshot easily like Ren'py. The menus are ugly as sin, and the default character sprites are extremely dated too. I've also occasionally run into stability issues where some games will straight up freeze up or crash outright, something that doesn't really happen with Ren'py.
I won't completely ignore a RPGM game if it uses that engine, but the game certainly gets kicked down quite a few pegs in my priority list just because I don't want to deal with the annoying bullshit associated with the engine.
Completely agree. You can only "zoom in" basically. Now Yanfly does have a plugin that allows the size to increase to 1920 x 1080 but doing that crashes the game for some reason. I think it's because the games internal resolution is 816 x 624 so anything bigger confuses the engine and causes it to crash. If there is another plugin that fixes this or makes it work I don't know of it.
The only time I've seen stability issues in an RPGM game is when two or more plugins aren't compatible with each other and cause problems for the engine or some scripts weren't scripted propely. Another problem is freezing up is if you run autorun events improperly it can cause the game to get stuck.
Lag although rare in RPGM games is usually caused by too many ( usually parralel ) events running at once or if the game is constantly checking for something/trying to get an event to run during that check but failing to do so for a number of reasons.
RPGM games need much interaction to play one handed it gets annoying.
There are plugins that can allow a RPGM game to be played WSAD style with all buttons for actions near WSAD so it's not impossible, I've tested and tried it in my game and it seems to work as long as you enjoy playing it with your left hand but I can also understand not everyone would like this type of control setup.
I might of gotten a few of the technical points wrong but I based it off my own experiece so it might not be accurate to every scenario.
Last thing I'll say is, if in the right hands RPGM can make great games. But because it's so easy to use a lot of inexperienced devs use it and pump out the first game they make which is normally never any good or the engine is used for cash grab slop pumping which only makes it's already luke warm rep worse.
