I've look at it a bit, as well as Game Maker, and I think I'm going to go with Unity when 4.3 and the native 2d tools are released. I'm mainly worried about being limited, and I think unity will give me the most options, and I'm not shy from coding altogether.
Then yeah, unity is the most powerfull of the bunch, but also is $1500, so unless you are going the yaaarrrrr way you are looking into a considerable investment.
Construct is the best when getting something running fast with ease, gamemaker is far more powerful than construct due to some recent developments, but it's drag and drop is nearly useless.
XNA is discontinued and it already doesn't run on newer devices, so don't go near it, you would be wasting your time.
Torque2D is very powerful, but not as much as gamemaker.
Then there's multimedia fusion, which is extremely weak, but incredibly easy to use.
Well, looking at the licence for Unity, it seems development is mostly clear for the free version. Most of the restrictions shouldn't make much of a difference for a 2d game, and its good up to $100,000. If I manage to make that much, buying the licence shouldn't be a problem.
I was set on XNA, since I've seen it do everything I want it to, up until I heard it was being dropped. Depending on how long it takes Unity to release their 4.3, I'll might end up prototyping stuff in construct, or just Unity with a third party program, to get a feel for things. Then, depending on how the licence continues with the 2D toolset, move forward with that or possibly gamemaker if there are some nasty restrictions.
I'm pretty set on Unity right now despite the licence since it looks work-around-able and the animation head at my school has alot of experience with it. Having someone to go to directly with any potential problems would be fantastic. I definitely appreciate the pointers though,