RandV80 said:
RPG Maker has been around for as far as I know 15 years? I first got into trying them out 12-15 years ago. Back then it was all old Dragon Quest/Phantasy Star style combat, and I know that at some point they at the very least added early FF type combat.
23 years, actually, but the earliest version were not released in English.
It's true that the engines focus on turn-based combat and that it's a challenge to make an action or strategy RPG, but it has been done. However, if you are going to go that route, other software may be a better starting point. What most people do is add their own mechanics to the turn-based skeleton RPG Maker offers. Combat may look the same at first glance, but play a view battles and different mechanics emerge.
Many RPG Maker developer don't use the combat system at all, and instead use the software to make various types of adventure games.
I'm not saying you're wrong since I'm not at all involved in the community, but of the many RPG Maker games that pop up in my Steam recommended list this would be the first one that uses a different combat system than the early DQ/FF style. But it's not just about combat mechanics, even things like movement, menu's, text, etc all end up being the same. A lot of this is probably less about what you can do (especially as I understand the most recent version has proper scripting in it), and more that most people will focus on the art/story/music and use the stock settings for the technical stuff.
Well, yeah, that's kind of the point of RPG Maker. It offers people with limited programming and artistic skills the tools* to make a game. The software offers basic menu's and such, and unless you need those menu's to do something different, it can be hard to justify going out of your way. Most people pour their creativity in things like story and dungeon design. For instance, Lost Dream has 50 optional puzzles that are sure to please Lufia and Zelda fans, while Eternal Eden has puzzle dungeons that should make many modern RPG developers feel very ashamed of themselves.
Most RPG Maker games offered on Steam aim for nostalgia, and many of those games do hit the target. However, elsewhere on the web there are a ton of (free) games available that put a much higher emphasis on trying something different. Off (from 2008) is in certain ways like a less adorable Undertale, there's clever Japanese horror adventures such as Moshi Moshinee.
(The Japanese title of the software is RPG Tsukuru, 'tsukuru' being a pun on the Japanese word for create and the English word 'tool' ('tsuru').)
