To alleviate any concerns that some of you may be having, i'll address some key issues here.
As someone that briefly played around with rpgmaker many years ago back in college, I can tell you that anyone on this forum can use that program with EASE. It requires no programming knowledge, and most things are drag and drop. The engine is loaded with a shit ton of pre backgrounds, sprites, sound effects, music etc. However, if you do have some programming knowledge, and other skills(art, music, etc), it will set the game apart from other fan projects.
In regards to the character roster being to big. The current roster could be implemented into the game within 5 minutes effectively (sprites, animation, poses, battle abilities etc). Its that easy. Problems would only arise if you really wanted to go all out and have a persona like portrait for each character when they speak.
Personally, i dont think this project seems ambitious at all. Then again, that's only because i know what to expect.
Making a game will not take hours and hours of work every single day for a year. In fact, you could spend 15-20 minutes in 4 days out of the 7 days and get a pretty good project put together within a month or so.
Id encourage most of you to look into the engine and see how it operates. (Youtube etc)