Quote: "I'm interested in making a top down action game, what program is best suited for making this type of game? What is best for creating sprites and them animating?"
All of the languages you listed are capable of such a task. How difficult this might be, depends upon the type of visuals you're after. Do you want a top / down view that rotates ? How many layers, Pixel or Vector collisions.
Programming animation is as simple as stepping though a set of frames, the real hurdle will be drawing the animations, which can be far more challenging. But this is not a programming language concern though, that's the concern of the artist and the software they're using.