As it stands, I am not a programmer, not even a little. I'm making a video game though so I gotta do it. 

If anyone has any recommendations for programming language/engine tools that are 1) free or wild cheap, and 2) at least somewhat beginner friendly, I would greatly appreciate being pointed in the right direction.

I've sketched out a combat system on paper that's going to rely on hit boxes, and at least 4 layers of them. I'm guessing just about any language or engine these days can do that but if there's one that's like "oh no this is the one" I'd thank you forever for that knowledge. 

Lots of assets and tutorials for unity to get you started 

What you're describing, I think you can do with any language and almost any engine.

The three most used engines are Unreal (it's not very user-friendly from the start if you don't know anything about programming).

Unity and Godot; these two are quite similar. They're very popular, so they have large communities, and there are many guides and tutorials to help you get started from scratch.

Unity is controlled by a company; it's free to use for creating games, but depending on your annual sales, you have to pay them a royalty. Also, a few years ago there was an issue because they wanted to charge for each game download, and as a result, many people no longer support Unity.

Godot is an open-source alternative; it's free, with no royalties of any kind, regardless of your annual earnings.

If you look beyond these three, you can find many engines, but the choice depends on your needs. Some engines are specifically designed for people who don't know how to program or have limited programming skills, such as GDevelop. Personally, I don't recommend using them. They're usually fine for simple things, but when you need to do something complex, you often have to resort to programming, so I recommend learning instead of avoiding it. But they're an option, and they can be useful if you're only interested in producing a game and not in the process of creating it.

GODOT may be a good option if you want good graphics and a big ecosystem. I don't recomend Unity , Unreal or GDevelop because their business model (SaaS). But it may not be the most beginner friendly.

Coppercube is another one i'd recommend, specially if you want a PS2 style of graphics. Since it also leverage some of the programming task off your shoulders but keeping the door open to program stuff in JavaScript if needed, community is small but active, you will find lots of user made tools and extensions made for Coppercube. 

Thank you all for the advice! I've decided to go with Godot, it seems absolutely perfect for what I'm doing and not hard to use once I get in there and get used to it. I originally was gonna use GMS but that pricing model was a bad fit for me and my life, at least for the scope of thing I'm making lol