RPG Maker MV Review (Twisted)
I've developed a game in RPGMaker MV and published it on Steam too! So I think I'm fairly qualified to tell you this: Run, run, and never look back. Because RPGMaker MV is a nightmare.
It is so inept, so incompetent, that it leaves me bewildered and frustrated. This software is outdated, poorly optimized, full of overpriced DLC, and the bare minimum in provided tools and effort. It's insane that there isn't readily available competition to sweep it off its feet. If it weren't for the absolutely incredible scripting community, this engine wouldn't even be viable for game development.
I can't even list every issue I've had over the years: memory leaks, extremely challenging-to-troubleshoot crashes, and no way to effectively input or edit batches of text. But I can point to a few that represent the product as a whole. In RPGMakerMV, you can't resize the windows. I repeat: You can't RESIZE the windows. Text and events without word wrapping spill straight off the side, making even basic text editing such an awful slog that experienced developers have literally started coding dialogue outside the game in JavaScript and writing scripts to call to the dialogue when needed. This problem is the core of RPGMaker; it pretends to be basic and accessible while actually being extremely unforgiving and complicated if you want to do anything outside of its boundaries. The amount of creativity or third-party scripts required to create even simple systems like a skill tree is absurd. And this is really a problem when the base product contains a complete and utter lack of quality of life features.
It loves to present this idea that it's 'simple,' and all you need to do is press a bunch of buttons and check boxes, but that design philosophy ends up both so inherently bloated with multi-page lists of ambiguous options while also being limiting because it's extremely challenging to break outside of that framework without extensive JavaScript knowledge.
RPGMaker MV is at its best when you're doing the bare minimum and making an extremely simple game. But all the famous RPGMaker games, Omori, Fear and Hunger, and Karryn's Prison, have significant amounts of external JavaScript coding to make them work. As much as I respect it, at that point, for your own sanity, just use a better engine.