I joined a few days ago but only just saw this post. I've never made a game before, though I've always wanted to, and after struggling with RPGMaker for a few weeks I gave up and decided to try out AGS. It was a pretty involved process...I run a Mac but ran into some bugs when using Parallels, so I had to suck it up and install Windows via Boot Camp. It's been pretty smooth sailing since though; I've just been fiddling around and clicking through tutorials, trying to get a feel for it. So far, I like the engine way way more than RPGMaker haha.