Python is one of the better choices, especially for prototypes. My personal opinion is however that projects in dynamic languages (python, JavaScript, PHP, ..) are easier to write than to maintain, since you have less compiler support checking stuff for you. That's why I preferr C#, great tools and documentation support, popular etc. I'm not going to force it one you though.

The definition of what a game engine really is has never really been truly defined, but the general idea is that is the code that can be shared for a "type of game", to be complemented with the game-specific content for that game. If someone has already created a game similar to what you want, chances are you could take their code ("engine") and use it either as-is, just replacing maps, graphics etc with your own, or use it as a base to create your own spinoff-engine.

What an engine contains is highly individual. Some engines are very complete and can be used directly by just adding content while others are very low-level frameworks, just defining some overall structure and providing some helper code. In some cases you may want to use an existing rendering solution for example, that might be called a rendering engine, which may or may not be part of a bigger game engine. It's somewhat messy.

Anyway, I wouldn't be too concerned about using an existing engine in your particular situation, it seems perfectly fine to go with something like Xna/MonoGame or pygame if you can't find a nice fit.

True and thanks for the suggestion. I'm going to start taking a look at pygames for the time being. We've got a lot of details about how numbers work in the game down already it's just a matter of putting on screen. This being a first game for both of us means we should start small and ease into this. Between both our life responsibilities, pacing is going to need to be a very serious thing.

I may be wrong, but it seems to me that maybe you are mixing the concept of game engine with the one of a scene editor.

A game engine will give you a set of ready code that will make it easier for you to code your game. For instance, it will give you a function like animationPause, which will pause the animation of an object. You don't have to worry about frame count or timers, it is all done for you. But you still have to code the creation of that animation yourself.

Some game engines offer a scene editor, where you can visually create a scene and what you see in that scene is what you get in the game. Some also allow you to attach scripts to the objects of the scene (that makes the game creation easier, but this feature tends to be the paid engines ).

On a final note, there is a pretty famous tile editor that some engines can import from, the name is tiled. You can find it here: http://www.mapeditor.org/

Thanks for that Cross, needed to take a good look at an tile editor. Also very much appreciate the clarification. I was under the impression that a game engine encompassed a bunch of other things(I wish I could remember the link I was reading from). Started playing around with pygame and a very simple application didn't take much to ge going. I'll do a bit more research on it.

If you're looking to learn an easy new language, you can make your game with Lua and
Love2D: http://love2d.org

It's a game-oriented framework (generic functionality, can be used for several game genres) with which you can make your own game engine (specific logic for a specific genre, you only use parts of the framework that suit your game).
A 2D RPG is certainly a possibility with this.

I took a look at Love but I didn't see Love2D I'll look into it.