just found out that rpg architect's 3D camera can be controller by the mouse with freelook too instead of just the arrow keys in pre-defined rotations. straight up, that might be how i design my next game. if i can get 8-way sprites and pixel movement in there, which i'm pretty sure i can, i still think that's going to be the way to go over making the jump over to 3d completely. still looking into other engines of course and i will be until the time comes to start working on it, but that's looking pretty convincing as of right now.