Legend of Krystal Forums

I'll be making the game using Box2d (using the Citrus Engine), and a few other libraries for fancy effects. It will be a large project and I work a lot during the day, so updates may be far and few between. I'll be posting a SWF for large updates: this will appear on the second post (so you don't have to keep scrolling through the thread).

I'll be using XML to make the speech situational. It'll contain aspects which will alter gameplay, meaning the game will have replayability, and also that the voices will be editable by the player if they want to change the default. I haven't properly figured this out yet so I'll update it once I venture further into it, but here's a little example of the architecture:

<rooms>
<room1 name="bedroom">
<char1 name="" age="" work="">
<happy text="" />
<timi text="" />
<angry text="" />
<horn text="" />
<mische text="" />
<sleep text="" />
</char1>
<char2 name="" age="" work="">
<happy text="" />
<timi text="" />
<angry text="" />
<horn text="" />
<mische text="" />
<sleep text="" />
</char2>
<char3 name="" age="" work="">
<happy text="" />
<timi text="" />
<angry text="" />
<horn text="" />
<mische text="" />
<sleep text="" />
</char3>
</room1>
<room2 name="downstairs">
<char1 name="" age="" work="">
<happy text="" />
<timi text="" />
<angry text="" />
<horn text="" />
<mische text="" />
<sleep text="" />
</char1>
<char2 name="" age="" work="">
<happy text="" />
<timi text="" />
<angry text="" />
<horn text="" />
<mische text="" />
<sleep text="" />
</char2>
</room2>
</rooms>

As I understand it,
<char1 name="" age="" work="">
<happy text="" />
</char1>
is the same as
<char1>
<name></name>
<age></age>
<work></work>
<happy text="" />
</char1>

Is there any advantage of using properties over nested tags, or vice versa?