yes, a nice looking game having a good video could be boring after playing with it 5 minutes.

my main interest is game AI, maybe because my favourite game genre is strategy, where you have to rather think and organize than shoot. a good and addictive game gives you reward only if you are really good, or more exactly if you can improve your skills continuously, and it needs a very-very fine tuned game and enemy AI system. or make multiplayer to fight against human players, but it requires a server to maintain and also some network programming skills.

Esenthel provides you MMO solutions, basic navmesh pathfinding, a nice editor, useful game classes, quality rendering and effects, but it is not a toy, it is rather for making quality games, and requires advanced programming skills. Unity and 3DGS is good for toying too (beside the possibility to make good games of course!), but you can build your game onto example projects source codes, just have to read a lot and tweak them, it requires to go through only a few C++ tutorials like I did, with some basic programming knowledge (of Lite-c or UnityScript) it could put you into the right direction.

Exactly
I got started with game programming about 12 years ago
At the time the "know how" was mainly graphics related
I have 8-10 game programming books on my shelves
I can throw them away , nowadays
Modern game engines do the job for you
The only item left to the game devloper is what you call artificial intelligence and I prefer to call game play

Some A.I. techniques can be standardized ( A* , fsm ) but it ìs a matter of fact that it is hard, if not immpossible, to supply general purpose solutions same as in the graphic side

And even like that there are some ready to use system fro some game types like FPS.
Crysis have built in AI taking account of cover points and 3D stuff.You can re use it, and it works pretty well.
last Splinter Cell game had a more advanced AI than Crysis i think, with ennemies searching for you and reacting to sound you make also.

The other style of complicated AI is Strategy, and it could be some real life simulation games also if someone would make some.

After that the AI you'll need will be not so advanced and it's not really necessary, like for MMO, action games, where it's more go to player , attack it on distance and sometimes using some advanced pathfinding system.

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3D has evolved like software.
You had Cobol and such without any Web or interface compared to nowadays, where you needed to take care of all stuff and only specialist could work on it.
Today you have evolved code editors, tutorials everywhere, anyone could produce a software following some tutorials.

That's same thing for 3D, you don't need to be a specialist, you just need to create the game , so have content, ideas, and programming to learn.

Never used them but I wonder whether it is the same stuff as the old Torque
Fantastic engine as long as you want to make a Tribe clone, a nightmare for anything else
I dont really think that an engine can supply valuable tools for the "gameplay"

a nightmare for anything else
I dont really think that an engine can supply valuable tools for the "gameplay"

One again it depends on what you are programmer or artist and what you can learn or not.
Some 3D artists use UT3 to make some FPS games, evene some tower defense mixed with FPS.
And if you want ot go beyond FPS , yes you'll have to find a programmer or you'll have to find and learn what you can do or not (visual programming limits, programming complicated or not ?)

All depends on you and your ability or directives (no programming, no 3D art making) ?
And what is your project type.

I just can say good luck to indie people wantign to make Crysis , GTA 5 or Skyrim

Esenthel is just developed by one guy, so for a serious game project I'd not use it. Furthermore the installer is written using the engine as well as the tools as far as I could see it. I deleted it after 5 minutes. The only reason for me trying it was that it says it could display unlimited worlds but the example levels look soo empty that notbody could be sure if the engine could stand more details. I'd use the Cryengine instead (at least for an indie/non commercial game).

yes, the editors has their own style, but it is definitely a good engine, I could get good performance beside very nice quality, without too much optimization, much more easily than in 3DGS. its scripting is really more difficult than lite-c, but much easier to handle than e.g. UDK. importing graphics assets is also fine and fast.

it has a terrain streaming system so only a few terrain chunks are visible and loaded into memory, but no instancing, so have to design levels carefully. but it is developed very fast by that one person comparing to a couple of other game engines... I will make soon some test projects again in Esenthel, beside working mainly in 3DGS.

I'd use the Cryengine instead (at least for an indie/non commercial game).

Very different perspective indeed.
For free non commercial i could myself go and play a lot with Cryteck, UT3 etc ...
But whne you want to go indie commercial , you'll have to figure out , about licenses and fees when they are.
For non commercial, yes don't hesitate to play with any AAA engine.

after about a one month-long development (29.Nov-21.Dec.) Esenthel Engine 2 now supports Linux too. not bad from a single person developer...