[licker]

Easiest nation to play is the one you have played the most.

Best nation to start with to learn the ropes is one with little magic diversity and obvious strengths to take advantage of.

Niefel if you want to play with blesses, Abyssia if you want to just burn everything to the ground, and C'tis if you want to just spam skeletons at everyone forever and ever.

Now, there are tricks to any of those nations, but they each offer a relatively straightforward start up and power ramp up, and you don't have to mess around with much outside of your particular magic paths (Water/Death for Niefel, fire/blood for Abyssia, and Death/Nature for C'tis).

But yeah, generally, just pick one nation, read some guides on it, and play a dozen SP games (don't have to play them very far even) to get a feel for how you think it should run.