Considering its free, you should try out flashdevelop and if it doesn't work out, buy Flash CS5. Also if you want to save money on Flash, you can use a relative or a friends student ID which saves you a lot of money and you can buy CS4 which i'm pretty sure its price went down when CS5 was released. There is not any major differences between CS4 and CS5 just CS5 has a few little new tools.
My suggestion: -read a bunch of tutorials/books (books are better, ofc) and be sure to understand them FULLY. -try the flash 30 days trial - THEN decide. Trying flashdevelop at the beginning might just drive you insane, and make you leave the whole thing. Consider also that there is a huge student discount for flash, 159$. Seeing that you're a 13 years old in Australia, you should be able to get it But try the free trial before anyway.
DON'T LISTEN TO V6Y, FOR GOD'S SAKE! Buying flash might be the better thing that you'll do in your life, and it can be also the funnest. Again, try the free trial :P Plus, I don't get the additional stuff part >_> you may need photoshop if you want to make awesome graphics, but it's not needed. There are lots of decent free drawing programs.
Naa dont buy. Buy something cool and better. Like a game consol or a 3d tv idk. Besides you will need more money for additional stuff u will later on need besides flash.
Cooler and better? Why are you even visiting and commenting in this forum section if you don't respect programs and programming? Really your just answer the question for yourself not for someone that is interested in programming.
Then I found out that there's this thing called Flashdevelop. It's apparently harder to grasp then Flash, but it's free..
If you don't know how to program or what flashdevelop is I wouldn't recommend buying flash. If you're interested in the subject the buy/borrow a book on flash and as3 study those, download the trail and see if you have what it takes and if you're even interested in it.
Even still, FDT > FlashDevelop. Yes, FDT is pricy (700 euros for a Max version), but it makes coding so much easier once you get the hotkeys under control... I wouldn't recommend it to a starter though.
The good news for you is that there have been great games created with either of your options. Some developers prefer one over the other but the quality of the work produced from each one is dependent on the person using the program.
I suggest learning AS3 to get yourself started just because it is useful in both.
