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Essentials, any day. Its easy to update the mechanics, be it battle or field etc, to the latest games. There is no sprite, pallette or scripting limitation. Music, new tiles etc which are a massive pain to add in GBA games are nothing more than a simple file replacement in Essentials. No new coding language like Python or XSE needs to be learnt for making a full fledged game and if you really want to tweak every single aspect of your game then there are various tutorials you can check out to learn Ruby (but this isn't necessary). There are many tutorials on Whack-a-Hack for learning all about Essentials and Thundaga on YouTube has made an in-depth tutorial on "How to make a Pokemon Game in Essentials"
The only disadvantages of Essentials are that RPGXP, the base on which Essentials works is a paid software. Also, TPC and Gamefreak had shut down Essentials in the middle so it might be risky and Gamefreak has also shut down many games like Pokemon Uranium, which was made in essentials and was free to play, for copyright infringement.
If you're onboard with Essentials then you can start right now or what I'd suggest is that you wait till late 2020-early 2021 for Essentials v18 because the leap between Essentials 17 and Essentials 18 is very massive and many new features and all are in the works for it, which aren't in v17.
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