I'm sorry, this'll be out of order as I find answers to these questions.



As of right now, I can't say. However, the load times of RPG Maker 3 ARE faster than those of RPG Maker 2. It takes maybe a 2 or 3 seconds switch between most menus. It's not really noticeable.



Yeah, it's true. I also believe out of the 100 characters you're allowed to create, it includes your party, as well.



There are 43 portraits and 7 different styles for each one.



Looks to be 49 different types so far. Not sure about the pitch and all yet.



At this moment, it doesn't. However, the camera does go into a kind of first person when you use the right stick to look up (like at a ceiling) or at the ground.



You get 3000 different items to add to a database. This includes everything that you'll ever put in the game. When you hit 3000, that's it, I believe.



There seems to be a nice level of customization, yes. You can change a lot of stuff about items, characters, and monsters.



I'm inclined to think that this does not suck.



Not with the default setup.



For the portraits, I see:

Pop Art
Anime
Drawn 1-5



Well, the field map has a certain limit in the Field Creation mode, but I created a small rectangle and it took me about 10 minutes to explore it. The Field is HUMONGOUS.



The on-screen one is a QWERTY-style one.



You can have NPCs in towns and dungeons, but not on the world map.



Just BGM, I believe.



No, you can't use monsters as NPCs or PCs.



The Class Editor will allow you to choose which classes can weild weapons and which ones can't.

Expanded:

When creating a class, you can choose which weapon that class will be associated with. It seems like a character must have a class in order to use a weapon.



Yep, sure is.



Nope, no monsters can be used as PCs as far as I can tell.



There are 53 in-battle effects



Some quick notes:
Up to 4 monsters at a time in a group.
You can change the level of each individual monster in the party.
Monster parties may drop up to 4 items.



Mythical Beast looks like a giant kangaroo-ish rabbit.



The battle system is entirely default. But that's not a bad thing, as it looks very good.



I haven't seen any options for Pitch and Tempo yet. I don't know if it can be changed or not. But there are about 50+ songs to use.



There's no VFX editor. However, all of the effects in the game look cool.



This game's default battle system makes battles fun. I had fun testing my own battles. MY OWN BATTLES.

The battle system is in FF-style display, with 4 of your characters and up to 4 enemy characters. There are 9 spaces on which you can place the party members/monsters, respectively.

Characters jump forward and do the motion for their attacks once their ATB has filled up.

Battles so far are indeed random, but you can choose the frequency with which it happens (Low, Medium, High, Always) based on the terrain you want them on.


You can program events that happen in the Day or Night.



Nope, you can't switch them in and out ala FFX. Also, only party members taking place in the battle get XP.

Note: There may be an option to give XP outside of battle. I will check on it.

Correction: It IS possible to give the entire party experience.



There's no customizable buttons.



Resizing characters doesn't seem possible, but transparency might be. I will check and change this later.



There's an option in the game called "Player Battles" wherein you can face off against NPCs in battle! So count any character that you can make into the monster list!



In dungeons, at least, you can make collapsable walls that fall with a press of the X button. In the sample game, the boss was blocking a wall. When you killed him, he told you to check the wall. Upon doing so, it crumbled and let you save the bellydancer and get her goods.

I could see some great hidden rooms and secrets forming already!

Also, there's an abundance of nasty traps you can place in dungeons, too, such as spiked floors, walls and ceilings, swinging hammers, flying kunais, and lava floors. You can set the damage loss in them to whatever you want.



Cutscenes are Fire Emblem-esque.



A short list would be

Pros:
VERY easy to use
Effects are great
Default Battle System (DBS) looks good and is pretty fun to play with.
Player-to-Player battles (increases the amount of battleable characters)

Cons:
Buildings aren't customizeable.
Character can get caught on an invisible piece of wall sometimes.
No ability to make cutscenes outside of the default Fire Emblem way.
Walking (way too slow; you'll want to run everywhere)



I believe it can.



Dungeons can be multi-level very easily. You can also customize the size and shape of your dungeons, too.



No. Only one controller is responsive.



As of yet, I haven't seen a hot air balloon or other form of conveyance.



So far, I haven't been able to move the camera. It mainly stays behind the player.



Yes, there's a color option that makes him look like a raven.



As far as I know, no.



Yep, you can have players insert whatever name they want for any or ALL of the characters you want.

I'm back answering questions.

(9/10/05: 3:00pm EST)

Answering more questions.

have you found anything else about the camra movement yet

I remember the blur in RPGM2... I know it isn't in RPGM3. But can you make blur happen, like the Linger option RPGM2? (Like trails, famous in GTA)

The other staffers games should come in Friday, so they'll be on answering questions. I'm currently on some other projects.

You can type pretty much all fields except ones requiring numerical values (stats) as far as I know.

I went through, and no, you don't have that option. However, you are not limited to one style of headshot, there are various from drawn, to a comical style, to anime.

Hope that helps.

What about title screens? Is there a whole new editor for that?

-In rpgm 1&2 I (the owner/creator) could require the player to put in a password in order to edit my game-so i can keep them from tampering with it..is that feature found in rpgm3 & if not is there a substitute? - If my memory card is running out of memory, can I continue it onto a 2nd mem. card like i could in rpgm 1+2?