Helloooo! I just turned 21 and I am going to DIE if I sit on this game any longer. Without further ado, my first step of the process: choosing an engine.
As much as I'd like to endlessly pour over the engines out there. I need to start somewhere relatively beginner friendly. I've also gathered a few RPG maker games from sales over time, and those seem like a good place to start. The rpg makers I currently own are RPG maker 2003, RPG maker XP, and RPG maker MV. My main concerns when it comes to making my game is which one is going to be the best for what I want, which mainly concerns 2 thing: graphics capabilities, and general ease of creating games. I think the older two have their charms and I'd love to play around with them for smaller fun-side-project titles, but I think MV has the most support and most modern capabilities that will hopefully help me get my game to where I want it to be as fast and painlessly as possible. So RPG Maker MV will be my game engine of choice!
I can't start on nothing though, so I'm starting a list of resources for my game-making journey. Here's a few good ones:
"An RPG Maker Graphic Resources Masterpost" by tumblr user pinkuboa. As it says, a masterlist of resources for various rpgmaker engines.
"THE NO BS GUIDE TO: RPG MAKER MV" by Sir Onion Knight on youtube. A series of videos explaining RPGmaker MV for beginners. also documented here.
"RPG Maker MV Tutorial: Beginner's Guide! Step-by-Step Event Commands!" by Echo607 on youtube. More beginner tutorial videos for MV!
It should be noted to any aspiring RPG gamedevs out there that apparently MZ is just MV but better. I considered getting MZ for this project but I think MV will work just fine. Just something to note if you don't have any new ones yet; MZ is probably your best way to go. When it's on sale, of course.