You should check out gamemaker

There are actually quite a few, which one you want depends a lot on what you want to do with it.  Stencyl or GameMaker are really flexible and user friendly but they aren't well suited for more complex game genres like RPGs.  Unless someone actually finished one of those work in progress engines since I last looked, the best free engines for making an RPG are RPGToolKit and Engine001.  There's also RPG Maker Ace Lite, but you can't make commercial games with it.

You will need to learn some programming if you want to make anything, even if using an engine.

It's just an unavoidable truth I'm affraid.

No game 'engine' will have all of the features that you will require for your specific game. No game engine is going to make the game for you.

An engine is just meant to do the 'heavy lifting' stuff (rendering, collision detection, device recognition, posibly networking). You will need to create the actual gameplay logic yourself.

I was going to recommend trying to find the source code for an older game that already has the features that you want and change it to taste, but even that will require programming knowledge.

I've been doing programming for a little while, I come from C++, working with SFML, but am now doing JavaScript with Phaser for web based games.

I was hesitant at first to learn how to program. This was the sentiment I had at the time:

"It looks too complicated!"    "It will take years to learn!"    "What if I am no good at it? Q_Q"

But I just sat my ass down and trudged through it. There were bits I hated, times where I thought I should just give up, that the end goal of making my super awesome game was just too unrealistic.

It all depends on how much you really want to make whatever game I guess.

If you are just getting started with the idea of making a game, then be warned, you have a mountain to climb.

Also, the 'quality' of the graphics as I think you mean it doesn't really make a difference speed-wise. You are still going to be drawing the same amount of pixels onto the screen, regardless of whether your assets look 8-bit or photorealistic. Unless you actually intend on making the display area of the game smaller...

Hey!

How do you plan to make a game without programming the game logic? Telling the computer what to draw where? Telling the computer how your game works? Or just open a single level? Which level should it open?

Is your game an rts? side scroller? top-down?

You will not find any premade tools where you get everything you want.

Learning programming is not hard. You can learn the basics and start using an engine. For example Unreal Engine 4, is a very good toolset you can get used to it in a week or so.

The earlier you learn the basics of programming the better. The better I got, the more I realised I could do.

It was this strange feeling of empowerment, almost godlike, that kept me opening up my IDE and smashing away at my keyboard, knowing that in my own little virtual world, anything was possible.

The only one of those mentioned that I have used is Game Maker, but after a quick look at the basic features of each one, my opinions are as follows:

RPGToolKit: Looks a bit meh. The crappy looking graphics on a lot of the games will just be down to whoever has created them. The renderer shouldn't care what colour pixels are used on each image.

Big downside is it only works (officially) on Windows PCs. It wouldn't be worth trying to 'port' it to other platforms.

Game Maker: We have this at college, and I don't like it. I guess that is just me being used to doing everything myself and not having stuff hidden from me behind a GUI. Some people have made some cool stuff with it, and the GML language that it comes with is easy enough to use. Might end up being your best bet for now.

Engine001: Never heard of this one before. Looks OK, I guess. The scripting system works similar to Kismet used in UDK, intuitive and easy to use. Though your game will probably feel quite similar to most of the other games made with it. 

If you do decide to concede to the inevitable, then JavaScript is what I recommend you learn. Most of what you learn from it can be transferred over to some other language very easily once you understand the core concepts.

I have made a functioning RPG with my own artwork and I can't program.  It is possible.  If the community for the engine is good enough, you can even customize it a fair ammount, still without knowing programming.  However, to do things that way you need to be flexible with the game you want to create and not be picky, instead you use what exists creatively.  If you want to be innovative and not limited in your creative vision, then yes, you will need to know programming.

This is where knowing what your end goal is comes into play.  If your goal is just to make an interesting game with your wife and share it with friends then you really don't have to worry about learning programming.  If you're wanting to start a commercial career in game making learning programming is an important step.  Those engines are still a great starting place regardless.

I've had quite a lot of fun learning Python and Pygame during the last months. Pygame is just a set of modules and I'm not sure if you can call it an engine, but it's pretty usable. It provides mainly event handling, collision detection, sound and of course 2D graphics support. My only problem was that I couldn't get the GUI libraries to work with Python 3 at first, but I manually updated PGU (one of the GUI libraries) and it seems to work now (still need to test it).
After one month of learning to program in Python (which is really easy to learn) I could already make a simple space shooter (okay just a prototype) and a geographical quiz game. I started with this online book: http://programarcadegames.com/
Here's a link to Pygame: http://www.pygame.org/news.html

I've also heard about this free, open source software called Game Develop, but I haven't checked it out yet: http://www.compilgames.net/
The website states that no programming is required.

And there's also LÖVE which uses the Lua scripting language: http://love2d.org/

http://www.indiedb.com/games/hexwarrior/downloads/hexwarrior228b Ive done a 2D generic game engine, it has 4 sorts of games included as examples. It uses hexagons for movement, it has an A.I. and can give all the chits different values to allow different things to be achieved. Its structure is of a 2D wargame with ranged fire. its simple to create a game, just add a map , draw some chits, place victory flags, place units, and its guaranteed to work! please keep everything you do free and please send me what you produce for it!

I've just opened to the public a game development platform that you can use to make simple games. Simple like flappy bird or 2048 or pac-man.

The games are programmed using a custom language I created that is really a sprite animator. The site has tons of examples and I'll be doing more as often as I can. The games run on any device (browser).

When you are done your game I publish it on another site http://playscl.com for anyone to play.
I made some knock-off games as a proof-of-concept and you can play at http://playscl.com
You can set up a developer account at the main site https://structuredcanvaslanguage.com/

If you have any questions, write me here.

You can also try out our open source 2d jrpg game engine and editor , it been a pretty good milestone so far, for a 6month old project, that still going. and at least still need more contributior ;p

It is created for a purpose of no coding required to make rpg games 

rpgboss.com

just got it on indiedb they do virus checks and so on http://www.indiedb.com/downloads/hexwarrior231 just got a set of shields

I haven't read the whole thread, (it's really long) so please don't correct me if I'm being repetitive. I am only 14 and have been programming in C#, Javascript, Python, HTML,(if that counts) and CSS for about a year now. I just wanted to say, it's not as hard as it looks. That is if you have enough passion for it. In about 3 months of programming, I started to use Unity, which is a game engine that does most of the gruesome work like rendering, networking, and importing that would have to be done manually otherwise. In about 4 months from when I originally started  programming and 1 month since starting with Unity, I published my first 2D app. Since then I have also published a 3D app too. I said all that to say that programming isn't as bad as it seems. It doesn't take a genius to do it. I am only 14 and I find it fun. So if I were you, I would choose Unity. AKA Unity3D. 

I haven't read the whole thread, (it's really long) so please don't correct me if I'm being repetitive. I am only 14 and have been programming in C#, Javascript, Python, HTML,(if that counts) and CSS for about a year now. I just wanted to say, it's not as hard as it looks. That is if you have enough passion for it. In about 3 months of programming, I started to use Unity, which is a game engine that does most of the gruesome work like rendering, networking, and importing that would have to be done manually otherwise. In about 4 months from when I originally started  programming and 1 month since starting with Unity, I published my first 2D app. Since then I have also published a 3D app too. I said all that to say that programming isn't as bad as it seems. It doesn't take a genius to do it. I am only 14 and I find it fun. So if I were you, I would choose Unity. AKA Unity3D. 

Oops! I think I just double commented.

I used to make games on gamemaker 7. Lite is free. full is 20$. GM8 is pretty pricey, style looks cool, just too pricey for me XD

But i have to agree that Unity has very good ability for 2D and 3D, also has many assets. of topic, its actually just unity, not unity3D, thats just the site domain name and a large misconception.

My two cents:

You don't know what you don't know... before deciding to make a mobile game, decide if thats really where you want to spend your "hobby time" for the next year to two years... it isn't for the light hearted.

Let me give you a breakdown of a game:  menu screens, a database (especially for RPGs), a game engine, graphic art, and level creation.  Which is all way harder than you think. 

IF YOU ARE SERIOUS ABOUT MAKING A GAME: Do a simple game.. as in.. the realm of flappy bird.  I could probably make a decent version of flappy bird in less than 2 days.  DO NOT: attempt to make an RPG from scratch.. you will fail.. or wish you would have earlier..  (If you are set on making an RPG, use RPG maker.) Even platformer games are difficult, but way easier than RPGs)

Suggestions:

Game Maker

Game Salad

Stencyl

Corona SDK (programming) - (What I use)

Unity 2D (some programming, but great software if you ever decide you want to make a 3D game after)

Good Luck!

He isnt wrong to say that its all harder than you think if your new to this stuff. realm of flappy bird is a little low i'd say. and yes. for a turn based rpg RPG Maker would definetly be best. however i cant say that if you go big then you will fail. most people, groups and even companys try to go big then fail, but this isnt always the case when you have the strong enough will to complete something. ive been working on an fps for about 6 months now and I dont plan on giving up anytime soon, I've still got that young spirit from only being 14. but still enough experience to know how to complete something and to know when someone will or wont. if you want this to be a small hobby that you spend only a few hours a week on then you have a decent chance of failing, but a lot of time to be put in to it and to learn will propel you to go further. i guess those are my 3 cents.

Anyone mentioned Torque2D yet? If not here it is https://www.garagegames.com/products/torque-2d

Have you tried WADE? They have tutorials and all the support you might need for the start.

http://www.clockworkchilli.com/index.php/developers 

 I'm looking for a game engine as well something similar to Flare