Old-School 2D VFX (Maplestory/ArenaOfKings/etc.)

Hi!
Sorry if this is the wrong section, feel free to move the thread elsewhere.
So, I’ve been looking for answers for days and I couldn’t find anybody talking about it, thus I decided to make an account here.
I’ve always been into 2D or semi 3D VFX like there but I don’t know how one goes about making them.
I took my time and asked a bunch of people from the internet, even guys that are responsible for making them but apparently everyone’s either secretive or are being extremely general about it like ‘go learn Houdini’.
They can’t all be made all the same, some of them have different degrees of complexity and animations/styles.

Example of games that use this kind of vfx:
-Maplestory;
-Arena of Kings;
-Any Chinese themed browser game that plays itself.
I combined them all because new users cannot insert more than 2 links:

https://imgur.com/uU6ePYp

Thank you and I am really excited to hear any feed-back.