Should I Code My Game The Easy Way or the Hard Way?

[burnpsy]

As some of you are aware of by now, I am working on a game I will be titling [i]Turtles all the Way: A Shell Game[/i]. With my having just finished midterms, I intend to begin working on the engine now, but then I got stuck on something. Do I use Unity or Microsoft Visual C# 2010 Express?

[b]Unity[/b]

Pros:[list]
[*]Drag and drop the placement of 3D models, allowing one to visualize everything as it's added.
[*]Making something like [i]Ratchet and Clank[/i] would only take a week if one has the required resources.
[*]Much, much less work.
[/list]
Cons:[list]
[*]Costs $1500 USD to get the Pro version and thereby unlock stuff like adding video. Without the Pro version, there's a brief Unity watermark when the game boots up. [url="http://unity3d.com/unity/licenses.html"]Full list of differences here.[/url]
[*]Restricted to platforms supported by Unity (those being web browsers, PC, Mac, and support for PS3/360/Wii with an additional cost, as well as iOS with an additional cost if I have a Mac).
[/list]
[b]Microsoft Visual C# 2010 Express[/b]

Pros:[list]
[*]I'd get more experience from doing things from scratch (I mostly worked with 2D until now).
[*]I can make stuff for any platform, and can even use compilers that would allow the finished product to run on any OS (including Linux).
[*]No additional cost for anything.
[/list]
Cons:[list]
[*]More work.
[*]Learning how to use it for 3D may be more difficult.
[*]Something that takes one line of code in Unity can take ten easily without Unity.
[/list]
Now, YCM-tachi, which do YOU think I should use?

[Lunar Origins]

This is a legitimately hard decision. On one hand, you have the easy way out - for a huge, huge price, that is. On the other, you have the humble yet hardy path, on trodden by many but completed by few.

Just for the legacy, I would suggest going with C#. It's a hell of a lot cheaper for a hell of lot more work, but you'd earn massive respect in my book just for that. But does the playerbase care about that, unless you push it in their faces? Hardly. If you have the money and like what you see, definitely go for Unity.

( totally not biased based off of the ratchet and clank comment )

[Tentacruel]

I thought C# [i]was [/i]the easy way.


But if you want some help,

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=23714

then find some tutorials on it.

It gives you a bit less API nonsense to worry about. But you will be limited to PC.

[burnpsy]

[quote name='Comrade Trollestia' timestamp='1329431141' post='5821120']
I thought C# [i]was [/i]the easy way.
[/quote]

Unity supports C#.

And I know about XNA.