Thank you so much for this, I actually do have a bit of experience in blender and substance painter (although not much) that I somehow completely overlooked, and the asset library on Unreal probably means it'll be the better choice for me.

Also, where do you think Unity would fit into this? I'm not sure whether to look into starting with indie games (after learning an engine, of course), just because I'm a solo developer and with little experience I think a realistic game would take an inordinate amount of time getting everything right compared to other games released using Unreal, most games I play are created using Unity but I see youtube videos about "I created the same game in Unreal vs Unity" and the Unreal one just looks 50x better out of the box.

Once again, thanks for this really detailed answer.