[jmatthews]

Trust me when I say they all lack a fully polished end to end solution when it comes to authoring modern games.

Depending on the graphical fidelity you're chasing Unity is probably the most polished of the 3 majors.

UE4 is a great tool but has a slower development cycle.

CryEngine is almost broken unless you're willing to do a deep dive in the source.

If by "explore game dev" you mean, "make games" Unity or UE4 will serve you well. UE4 has a nexus of great artists using the tool so recruiting artists that are familiar with the toolset is easier. Unity is some multiple of more productive, pending your skill level with C#.

I've evaluated all 3, am a proficient programmer in C++ and C#(among others), and have shipped several games with Unity. I've also worked on a couple of shipped titles with UE4.(nothing major)

[mintplant]

UE4's editor is also filled with bugs and inconveniences, and tooling and documentation for programming outside of Blueprints is haphazard at best. Crossing the C++/Blueprint boundary can be a pain, especially with interfaces. And the 2D support pales in comparison to Unity's.

On the other hand, Blueprints and the node-based material editor are really nice for quickly snapping content together.

[markatkinson]

That is great feedback, thanks.

Yea I think it is about time I gave Unity another go, and will set aside some time to go over some tutorials.