If you have a nice engine that helps with beautiful lighting / shadows, dynamic range, good animation rigging, or other useful tools related to graphics and visuals, it will be easier for you to make a "beautiful" game with less work than if you have to try and bring some of those things yourself.
It is true that people make stunning games even with janky engines by using great art and design. But the easier it is to implement your vision for graphics, the more likely you'll reach that level.
This is only sort of true. If you load any 3D model into Unreal Engine for example, the lighting and shaders will make it look pretty good without much modification. Godot is getting a big upgrade to its lighting and shader engine in 4.x
You are right, though I think all three can be compared, depending on the type of project. Unity is on the decline and I would be happy for Godot to become the future for those types of games.
Three.js is a 3d graphics library, not a game engine. You can use it to render your game but it doesn't bring the same things as Unity or Babylon.
I have often worked directly with an html canvas and some javascript to make 2d web games. It works well for me and I enjoy it, but I wouldn't call it a "game engine" either.
The mobile builds are its killer app, in my view as a gamedev. Unity has lost the plot in many ways. Desktop builds are important too, but there's competition there if you consider browser/electron as a desktop platform, plus Unreal. But Godot is the exclusive up-and-coming competition in mobile builds (that I am aware of; granted I am not a mobile dev).
- Open Source
- Cross Platform
- Frequent updates
- Easy to learn in a weekend
- You can use almost any programming language with it
- Godot 4.x has beautiful graphics
- Godette