yeah I don't like it when people say RPG Maker is restrictive, I mean it is, but it's all technical stuff like no 64-bit color etc. Well ok it sucks for people who want to make a space shooter or an FPS, but I think it can make like any rpg you want to do reasonably well. I mean it is a restriction, but not being able to draw or write a story for shit is something people should concentrate on more instead of am I using right engine??? I heard Yume Nikki didn't work as far as gameplay but watching videos of it I do think it's proof you can evoke whatever feelings you want to in an rpg maker game, you just have to put a lot of consideration into what you're drawing/how the game feels etc. Half the time the game isn't even like full rpg maker graphics quality, it's a bunch of MS Paint images but it gets the intended effect because it's made by someone who knows what the hell they're doing
but yeah like I said it sucks if you want to make some sort of crazy real-time irrigation Action-Adventure-Bocce system in your game, those people should move to another engine because they're obviously more interested in the game part and should be able to deal with the extra work of coding etc. I also mentioned Yume Nikki because I don't think behind the scenes there's too much ridiculous custom-coding going on, probably a lot of things are actually very simple commands/events that get overlooked because they're so simple/average person has no idea what context to use them in
I actually think the most restrictive thing about RPG Maker is you can't edit while playing the game in some way. Or at least edit it and very quickly jump to point x/y in the game. I think this is way worse than no side/rear/birds-eye view battle system because it's trying on a person's patience to play through the game and make sure it looks/feels exactly the way they want it. Just thinking about it makes me wish really bad there was a way to jump to random points really fast like editing a movie on the computer, deciding on the fly that this should happen at this speed, this guy should be more to the right. The only thing that is even vaguely like this is BATTLE ANIMATIONS. I mean even seeing if a certain music track works best in a certain area is a fairly large pain in the ass, although that you could pull off with debug events, have one vase play track 1, track 2 etc. and decide which is best