After bouncing off of Unity the first few times, I finally decided to commit to it after trying out some of the JS game frameworks (like Phaser)

Absolutely worth it, have made lots of games in Unity just for myself that feel pretty polished, there are just so many systems to make a game work.

The advice around game engines kind of seems like "to learn how to write programs first create the compiler.

Not to say all games should be made in engines but it certainly helps.