Wow thanks guys!

Luckily I have two other guys right now on my "dev team" and we're looking into which medium would be the best for creating this project...and we ruled out programming our own engine.

We came down to two options:

Make a 2d game using the Chrono Trigger engine (editing the ROM), or
Make a 3d game using 3d Game Studio.

If it's as user friendly as it seems, I think I'll give 3DGS a shot!

Will I be able to edit sprites within the program, or do the sprites have to be fully created and then imported?