Based on the info you provided, it's tough to fully understand your requirements surrounding the maintenance and consumption of the data. For example, are you planning to make updates in ArcMap only? Will the data be viewed from an end-user standpoint in ArcMap or will the data need to be published as a map service and visible to others via the web? For the time being, in reviewing what you wrote I'll keep it simple and assume you're looking for an ArcMap-only solution at the moment. The project you described could take so many different paths! It sounds interesting though!
Are you planning to use ArcSDE with either SQL Server or Oracle, or are you planning to use something like a file geodatabase? I agree with you the Access is not the best candidate, so I would avoid the personal geodatabase (plus I don't think it's supported at 10.2). Generally, the file geodatabase will suffice if you or only a small handful of people will be making edits at separate times. How much data are we talking about (i.e., small like 50 MB, or much larger like 10 GB)? The biggest thing that I see you needing to think about, at least at the beginning, is how to structure your tables and their various relationship classes. If you haven't already, you'll have to give some serious thought about how the data model is going to look. That includes a number of things like primary keys, foreign keys, constraints, field lengths, data types, general cardinality, and unique ID formats among other things.
If you choose to go with a file geodatabase to store your various tables and "link" them with relationship classes, that should work fine. I would suggest reading about the various relationship class types to understand your options. That being said, use your X and Y columns as the source for using the "Add XY Event Layer" tool in ArcMap. Once the features appear on the map, identify one of them to see how the related information shows up.
In terms of creating reports, what type of reporting engine are you thinking of using? There are several open-source options and there are several off-the-shelf options too. Tableau and Crystal Reports are two semi-popular reporting engines to investigate.