Full (and corrected) title of this topic: "Is Unity still considered as a good free environment to create a game or there are better options?"

I have some plans to create/release a game for PC - should I go for Unity or there are better options? It will be digital adaptation (probably in 2D) of my paper/card board game. My main reasons to make digital adaptation are: (at first) to do more additional tests and (later) to gather more funds before releasing paper version as well.

Is Unity hard to learn? I used to write some programs in C++ for DOS.

Which version of Unity should I use? I've heard that newest one is not always considered as the best one.

Unreal Engine seemed decent last time I was poking around in it. It is also completely free and has all functionality unlocked from the get go (so great for experimenting for a noob like me) unlike Unity but they take 12% of the money that you make if you plan on selling the game.

EDIT: above is wrong

Correct is: Unless you make more than $3000 a quarter, UE is free.

Don't Unreal do special deals for small indie developers these days?

What Unity's features are locked in free version? I was under impression that Unity itself is full and free unless you earned $100.000+ during previous year. Yes, I do.

That depends on a whole host of different variables. Unity is used in a lot of games nowadays, has a large userbase, a store to buy assets. So does unrealengine. Can you produce a good game in them, well that's up to your skill and how much you put it. They do 3D, and 2d although last time I looked 2d in unity was just rendering onto a 3D box with fixed camera.
There are other options if you want a simpler game engine Godot - a free mostly 2d engine with 3D:
https://godotengine.org/
Which is really good, totally free, lightweight, and you can code in various languages.
Then there is the various click and play gamemakers.

To avoid waffling for too long, unity is now subscription based, and you can see the various missing bits in the free version here:
https://store.unity.com/compare-plans
Is it hard to learn, probably not with all the tutorials, docs, forum, it is it hard to master...

Me I would go Godot+Krita, then move onto something bigger if needed.

What kind of game do you want to do (2D/3D - UI heavy or not)? What is your target platform/what are your target platforms?

IIRC, base Unity is free but there is Unity Pro that you have to pay for which has some extra stuff. Sorry, the info in my first post was wrong. Unless you make more than $3000 a quarter, Unreal Engine is completely free. If you exceed that income, you have to pay them 5% of the income.

But for simpler games, Unity is probably better.

I've never heard of it and will take a look. I would prefer something with with more coding involved as I would need to code a lot of AI things. Unless I'm mistaken that confirms that free Unity had full conding options and the only things I'm missing are like some cloud storage, advisors, hosting, tranings - I'm not so sure they would be things to "must have" for me.

Also - subscriptions yes, but only (as I said earlier) if you earned more that $100k during previous year, otherwise it's free. Can you explain what do you mean in the second part? The thing I'm afraid the most is being "locked" in the engine I get into at start and that could be very dangerous if my project will grow up at some time. As I said in OP, my main target is PC. It will be digital adaptation (probably in 2D) of my paper/card board game.

My main reason of digital adaptation will be (at first) to do more additional tests and gather more funds before releasing paper version as well.

The thing is (as I said above) I'm not so sure if that "extra stuff" will be useful for me at all. Also, isn't Unreal Engine mostly for 3D games?

I would consider libgdx, since your game is indeed UI heavy. I wrote my game with it, though I chose it also for multi-platform compatibility. Since you know how to code, Java won't be a huge issue: https://libgdx.badlogicgames.com/

Here's my game for example (4x strategy): https://blotunga.itch.io/birth-of-the-empires

It has good 2D support too but the engine in general is definitely aimed more towards 3D development.

I would like to suggest godot game engine

It's a small open source free game engine that supports both 2d and 3d. It uses its own scripting language called gdscript which is basically a strip down python. It is an engine gaining popularity and many hobbyist choose it over unity.

I am making a 3d fps game as a hobby project using the engine and I find it perfect for my need. I once made an unfinished 2d platformer too and find it very easy to do.

The engine however has a unique way of working. You need to adopt "the godot way" to use it effectively. Once you do however, you would wonder why other engines have to be so hard

It depends, just how lazy are you? If you want to put in real work, then there are several other engines which would be far more fulfilling to your needs.

This.

I find (coming from someone who enjoys programming and writing code) that Unity and UE are a little restricting. For example while you can make anything in UE it is still at its heart an FPS engine and doing anything else requires a bit of work to bend it to what you want.

Libgdx is great, particularly if you are just looking to do 2D. It has got a decent UI system, (based on Androids, which is the easiest UI creation I've ever tried) though it could be better, which I find is particularly difficult to find.
For example I love Panda 3D but its UI is appalling and if you wanted to make something UI heavy it's a real pain.