Your favorite Makers

[chrono2k]

RPG-Maker
Game Maker - Proably the easiest but not for rpg's... and so far no ones truly made an authentic mode7... I tried and failed
ika - Probably my favorite of all 3, it's easy to use, it uses a simple language, but it takes a couple hrs to learn. But don't be feared at all when you don't know how to do text with npc's. It's basically a python file with the name of the map.

Exaple:

townsquare.py

def zelda():
text("I'll tell you about how %(red)smagic%(white)s works later.\n"
           "It's neat-O." % colours)

[xfixium]

Well, I'd have to say Game Maker at this point. It's really easy to use, and flexible. You could probably fake Mode7 with D3D. Although I never thought Mode7 was all that great. Yes, please scale and transform something to make it even more pixelated than it was previously.