I've used RPG maker 2000, 2003 and VX ace from 2009 through about 2013, but I mostly used 2003 due to being a pretty good improvement in usability over 2000 while still being in 240p, and from my experience RPG Maker is an excellent tool for beginner game designers who are more experienced in making graphics than anything (my case exactly) and you could do almost anything you wanted using the game's event system, even some really impressive stuff as seen in this video:
(Unfortunately I've never managed to find this game for download so I can't say how well it plays)
But RPG maker 2003 doesn't have scripts, so there's only so much you can do in it, you'll always be limited to tile-based movement in it, no 8 direction movement either, only 2 BG layers with no way to split them and move parts at different speeds, and you have very little control over the parallax (although if you're really creative you could fake extra layers by overlaying sprites and animations on top, but that only gives you foreground layers)
Here's the thing though, I'm not much of a writer, I have no interest in making an RPG, so I've always been trying to see how much I could push RPG maker 2003, what I could get out of it that wasn't an RPG, granted I've never managed to get anything even remotely close to what's shown in that video, but I could already see from afar that using RPG maker to make something like that would be a massive pain in the arse, and it would most likely not play well at all, so if I wanted to make anything that was good I'd either have to upgrade to newer versions which supported scripts (such as VX ace which I also tried to use), which would require me to either learn to code on my own or use other people's scripts, which might not exactly do what I wanted to do, or use some other program, either way, I'd have to learn to code, so if I were to learn to code, I might as well go all the way and use another program where I'd have full control over everything! The sizes and amount of frames of animation of all of my graphics, where to put them, how to refer to them, all of my variables, I can have as many background layers as I want and I can make them parallax at any speeds I want, I can have my movement work any way I want, with whatever controls I want, my title-screen can be much more interesting than a static image with a dialogue box with 3 options that say "New Game", "Continue" and "Exit" or any variation of these 3 functions, so on and so forth...
And making all of those things with the level of control that I wanted turned out to be MUCH easier in Game Maker Studio...
Granted there are some things about RPG maker that I still like better than GMS, like the tilemap editor, GMS's Tilemap editor is a flaming pile of rubbish that I hate almost as much as I hate Sonic (or maybe even more considering that I have to deal with it instead of ignoring it) and uhh... I suppose it's easier to actually finish a game in RPG maker if your game doesn't have robust physics?
While RPG maker is definitely usable to make games on a publishable level, I see it more as a learning tool that you move on from once you've acquired enough experience (unless all you ever want to make is RPGs and RPG maker fits what you want to make) but if you don't want to make RPGs (like me) nowadays there are a lot of programs more suited to what you might want to make, which would serve as far more useful learning tools!
The same creators of RPG maker have made their own 2D game engine for games other than RPGs, which is IG maker, it requires no scripting knowledge what-so-ever (read: "It doesn't support scripts" at least as far as I've used it back in 2014) you code with events, kinda like you did back in RPG maker 2003, but it has a lot more broad events meant for things other than RPGs, so if you're not much of a coder and you want to make a shmup, a top-down action game, a puzzle game or a platformer (maybe even a fighting game?) you know, games that have more robust physics and aren't necessarily top-down, you can make them MUCH more easily in that than you ever could in RPG maker, THAT's when you'd be doing yourself and your game a disservice by making it in RPG maker, because that way you're only over-complicating something that could be done easier in other software...
And that's because IG maker isn't even the best one out there, Construct 2 has come to my attention in recent months and it's not only easier to use than IG maker, but it's also more flexible than it! It also uses a "coding through events" system, but that system is even more robust and somehow even easier to use than IG maker's, and it has "Behaviours" which you can use to make some of the game's objects pretty much code themselves, all you have to do is adjust some parameters, but personally, I don't like behaviours at all, from my experience they mostly work like s***, you're better off coding everything on your own with events, the only one that I found to be useful was "Sine" which makes an object move in a sine wave, it's alright...
Personally I'd say Construct 2 is a FAR more useful learning tool for non-coders who want to make games that aren't RPGs, even an action RPG would be better off made in it than it would in RPG maker I'd say because you're able to use as many sprites as you want and make them as big and animated with as many frames as you want, with full and easy control of the collision boxes, without requiring ANY scripting what-so-ever! (The program doesn't supports scripts either, but you can code fine just using its event system)
In this program you're not adjusting a pre-existing engine to suit your needs, you're making your own game engine in the easiest way that I personally know, which gives you MUCH more creative freedom and that's good!
That said though, RPG maker (and IG maker) still have a better tilemap editor... Yeah they just don't get any better than that... Although Construct 2 still has a better one than GMS, but GMS2 has just come out and it's a MASSIVE improvement in the tilemap editor! I haven't tried it yet (no moniez) but you can make animated tiles in it which you couldn't in GMS1 and you had to use a custom shader that replaces tiles with sprites if you wanted to do that, not to mention there's an auto-tiling feature too (like there also is in RPG maker) so that makes my job a heck of a lot easier... Oh and the Drag 'n Drop coding has also gotten better, I've heard that anything you can do with GMS Scripts you can now do in the Drag 'n Drop code, which wasn't the case before, so that makes the code much less of a pain to deal with in my book, not that I have to deal with that, I've got help, so all I have to do is make graphics, music, level design, character and monster design, sound effects and so on... I really need to upgrade to GMS2...
The point is that RPG maker is perfectly fine to make RPGs, but if you want to do anything else there are better tools out there which will make it much easier, at least from my experience, but hey, if you say that it's gotten easier to make action RPGs in RPG maker lately I'll just take your word for it, but from my experience, if it requires scripts at all, I'm always going to recommend other programs to use instead, not only for the added freedom, but also because the results will be better...
