GETTING STARTED WITH VERGE

i've never heard of this but i will stick with rpg maker.

While it's true that Verge has better introduction documentation (ika is about on par for API reference and language tutorials since it uses Python which has a plethora), it's not all sunshine and roses. Mostly in its language.

VergeC is essentially a Verge-specific scripting language that has all the ease of use of C (not much) with all the speed of being slower than just about any standard scripting language (ie, Python, JavaScript, Ruby).

While it has made a lot of improvements over the years it still has a lot of wonkiness to it and, worst of all, is procedural. This makes it far worse for writing/using libraries, team programming, long-term code maintenance, and general readability. While you can make a lot of arguments for procedural vs. object-oriented they're pretty much all rendered null when the procedural is slower than the OO and when the point of the engine is to speed up and ease game creation- object oriented is just plain easier to wrap your head around, especially as a new programmer. VergeC also has concepts such as types which make it even worse for new programmers along with missing easier ways to work with loops and the like.

Because it's a custom language you also miss out on any third party libraries for extending the language for things not provided by the engine. Furthermore, a language like Python allows importing C/C++ libraries if you need custom routines to run faster. This would be impossible in Verge without adding the functionality to the engine itself.

Recently Verge has added Lua which helps quite a bit in some of these areas but support is still flaky since only a hand full of people use it (read: it has little documentation and potential for problems using it). Plus, it's still procedural and has all the problems that go with it.

I could probably make some arguments regarding ika's API, hardware rendering, etc, but it really does pretty much just boil down to the language difference. It's not necessarily just because one has language x or y, but by having x or y the entire engine's design becomes affected by it. And it really is that big of an advantage, you can make games more maintanable, faster (in running AND actually writing them), and learn the language quicker with ika than Verge.

Considering you spend 98% of your time programming in either engine, the language really does make a huge difference. Jump ika's unfortunate gap in introduction documentation and you'll be far better off in the end.