Assets can be insanely useful, but they can also add a ton of unnecessary bloat to your project or make it really hard to integrate properly with your own codebase or make modifications. Is it worth it using those massive all-in-one game assets in a custom project?
For me, when it comes to tools assets I prefer tools that do one thing and one thing only. So I like simple one-off tools, those are much easier to integrate into a big custom project. I'm not a fan of massive all-in-one tools that do a billion different things, like 100 systems for making an RPG. Because yeah the more complex the asset the harder it is to integrate into your own project with your own custom code.
However that's just personal preference, some people really like having basically an RPG template to start with and just build upon that. It can be super useful for making a quick prototype to test out some game idea.
I think the best advice if you really want to use those massive assets, is to just not fight it. Those assets codebases naturally will be quite opinionated, and if you do want to use them then it's probably wise to just go along with how the asset is built, rather than completely modifying it to fit your personal code style. Otherwise if you refactor everything then you're basically doing it all from scratch and you might as well not even use that asset.
And of course there's an in-between. Like I said I think these massive game maker tools can be great for quickly prototyping some game idea. So you can do just that, and if the prototype works and you like the game, then you can rebuild the whole thing yourself from scratch.
That way you get the benefit of quickly testing, but also get a solid custom made foundation if you do decide to take that project to the end.
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