Yep, it slowed down quite a bit. Thing was that initially I added Mode7 not because of the eyecandy, but because of the looping map support (something RMXP lacks - why EB?). But considering the slow down, it was not worth it, so I implemented the looping using a certain script as a base, and fixed certain things here and there.
Don't worry. As a "patch" for the lose of Mode7, I'm gonna give some more love to the worldmap ;o. Actually I've never seen this as the final version... so yeah.