Well salutations and greetings to all of the Nova Crystallis readers! My name is Ehren, and I’m a brand-spankin’-new writer. Some of you may recognize me from the comments section or elsewhere across the internet, so let’s get this out of the way; I’m a staunch defender of the Lightning Saga, and I have quite a lot of passion for the entirety of Final Fantasy. To give you a quick idea of what I’m like (and how hard you’ll hate me), I’m going to briefly talk about my favorite Final Fantasy games.

• To start with, despite thinking XIII and XIII-2 are damn good games and loving the pants off of them, they actually are not my favorites. They did plenty of things wrong, and I understand why the fandom is so divided on them. My all-time favorite Final Fantasy is Crystal Chronicles for the Gamecube; It has one-screen co-op, character creation, and focuses heavily on replayability. Despite having a very non-present story, the story you DO encounter is absolutely beautiful and the ending made me feel more accomplished than any other game I’ve ever played.

• For numbered or ‘mainline’ Final Fantasies, XII for the PS2 is where it’s at for me. Ivalice will always have a special place in my heart, and despite Vaan’s relative wallpaper role after the first few hours I enjoyed the cast. Especially the tension between Ashe and Balthier, it was quite entertaining to see her huff at him. I’m an advocate of open-world games with no overworld map, so this game really hit my planetary sweetspot. I feel like all future games should take their cue from this, and if Lightning Returns and XIV: A Realm Reborn are any indication I may just have my wish!

• If you want to know my favorites by console gen, they are as follows: XII for the PS2, VIII for the PSOne, and V for SNES (Although I played it on PSOne and GBA). I have played almost every Final Fantasy game released in the US to completion with the exceptions of Theatrythm and Final Fantasy VI. The former because I do not own a 3DS, and the latter because halfway through the opening a friend explained the entire story to me and I’ve never had the will to pick it up since. I’ve read all about it and watched the whole game on “Let’s Play” videos, but never personally played it all the way through. As a final disclaimer, I’ve never met a Final Fantasy I didn’t like. I go into each game with as few expectations as possible, and have been overall satisfied even when I find things I wish had been done differently.

I’ll be writing a number of articles, reviews, and editorials as things come up over time so as Square Enix would say…

Please look forward to it.