If you had to choose between RPG Maker and RPG Architect in 2024, you should choose Architect. Here's why.
1. Incredibly active dev, who you can also talk to for help
2. No reliance on paid plugins
3. No spending hours looking at free plugins, trying to decided which version that does the same thing is worth using, or getting one and finding it has a bug that was never fixed and the author left the community X years ago and you hope someone will fix it
4. Baked in 3d and dynamic lighting
5. No RPG Maker stigma
6. Freeform whatever you want, seriously
7. Import RPG Maker graphics, any of them. RPG Maker ONLY did this with the most recent release.
8. Infinite tileset size, RPG Maker has no business in limiting this nowadays.
9. Many, many more...

If you still want to try out RPG Maker then be my guest, as it gets very cheap on sale, but it's too limited now compared to other options like Architect.

Between the nearly daily updates this receives, as well as the tutorial videos and a very active Discord, this has to be one of the most promising engines I've seen in a long time, and it's really good to see someone challenging the near-monopoly RPG Maker has had in this space for far too long.

After tooling around with this for the last week or so, I can confidently say this will finally allow me to make the Wizardry-like I've been wanting to make for years now!