i would assume with some tweaking you could make it top down, unfortunately i cant confirm that though. i do believe it has a forum, so you might want to check there. i wasn't able to get it working (i didn't try that hard though) but i've been wanting to work with Fife for awhile now.

good luck man, hope things work out for ya :)

You could give a shot to RPG Toolkit if you want an open-source RPG Maker. I have to say though that everytime I wanted to give it a chance, was extremely disappointed and uninstalled it after a few hours, but that was many years ago so perhaps it is usable now. It could be worth a try.

Another open-source RPG Making engine that was popular back when I was dabbling with RPG Maker is Sphere. It's supposed to be made to create 2D RPGs like Final Fantasy III, but it's only a naked top-down tilemap engine with sprites and you have to script the whole gameplay yourself in JavaScript, including things that should be basic to RPGs like items and menus, so it might be a little too basic for your needs. Again, that was many years ago so perhaps things have changed.