Megan Hunter's Worst Nightmare

Now I have a dangerous question to ask. Not in the sense that I think it's a big deal, but in the sense that other folks might. You can already feel the question, can't you? Trembling in your very bone marrow and you struggle against it's sheer inevitability. But I need to know, so here I go.

Enterbrain's finally selling VX again, but surprisingly they're also selling XP. Since almost everything I have for Nightmare is artwork and music, I'm early enough in the programming that I could easily switch engines and only lose a day or two. So that's the infernal question. Which program should I use?

I was thinking of XP and I'll tell you why, as I understand it. It's probably pretty obvious by this point that I don't know (or really care to know) much coding, and am content making a game that follows the RM engine rules pretty much verbatim. I do get really specific about the art, though, and from my reading there's several things that I need to do: things VX isn't supposed to but XP does automatically:

1.) Battlebacks. I got the script to work *sometimes* but this is crucial for me.

2.) Character menu graphics to appear during battle, at least when it's that person's turn. XP's approach would also work fine; not sure how complex this would be in VX. Ideally, the char's stats wouldn't cover up the portrait, or at least cover up all of it; I have seen different ones to different scales.

3.) Animations. I've found a couple of video or image sequence embeds for XP, haven't tried that code on VX.

So far, it sounds like in XP I'd just need the animation script, where in VX I'd need scripts for all three, which would all have to lively happily together, when I could barely manage to change my default font. That's my level of programming.

I also need to...

4.) Display images (portraits of characters) while dialogue text is up. Standard stuff, no need for battle. I'm hoping XP already does this like VX does? For Nightmare I don't need the little square box inside the text field, but if it was available I'd make use of it (showing what item was in a chest.) This is not something that's a dealbreaker.

5.) Maps using all the pictures I've drawn, basically functioning as paralaxes with invisible floor tiles on the spaces you're allowed to walk on. So in this sense I'm really bypassing any form of traditional spriting. VX can do this, but can XP?

In my mind RM makers are different enough to have their strengths and weaknesses; it's not like Photoshop where each new version is always better than the last. I don't hate VX and we're definitely using it for the other game (who's page is already up actually, but we're not making it public until there's a lot more to show and probably download, but that's where I've disappeared to lately.) But it turns out what VX does really well, the simplified coding for common functions? I've been doing it the long way anyway! I just noticed the button down there. I'm still too used to the 95 way of doing things, so I don't think XP would be too complicated from the dialogue and things like that.

What say you developers, for this particular project would switching to XP be the best thing for me? Or sticking with VX?