My friend is doing a Fire Emblem ROM hack at the minute, which is much simpler, and is dying to pointer codes. It's pretty tough to figure out what's what. I'd agree that a romhack would be easier if we had to program a whole engine, but with Pokemon Essentials RPGMaker is actually far easier.
RPG Maker works too, tried to figure it out once... If i had more time on my hands i could probably take a crack at it, now with the summer in and everthing.
P.S. By all means, keep me posted on the FE hack He's doing, LOVE FIRE EMBLEM!!!