Just to get the superficial shit out of the way; wow, this game looks awful on Switch. The FMVs are untouched, they look great. But holy hell the sacrifices they had to make for this game to have a decent locked framerate is crazy. It's kind of a miracle this version runs on Switch, so props to them, but damn I kind of wish I played on PC if I didn't prefer the portability.

The gameplay itself is actually quite an interesting change up from the standard FF formula, I found it refreshing... for a little bit anyways. I think the materia fusion system and the gearing is actually quite awesome in this game, but still not quite good enough to fix the greatest issue this game has which is repetitiveness. And this game is one of the worst cases I've seen from a AAA release, even if it was on the PSP intially. You will play the same exact maps at least 20 different times if you are doing a good chunk of the optional missions like I did. I ended up being like level 48 at the end of the game because I did so many optional missions, but I didn't even get 50% clear on the optional missions because there's just so damn many. This was a problem, because I absolutely STEAMROLLED the final bosses with little-to-no challenge, and I also endured dozens upon dozens of tedious little side missions, which granted, they take like 5 minutes tops, they're still the same exact thing; walk over here, kill a boss/bosses, a handful of chests/random encounters along the way. It is a fucking slog, which is why I would only recommend doing a few side missions here and there, as some of the questlines are actually quite cute, but man are the just generic missions so exhausting after a while.

The highlight of my time playing Crisis Core was the ACTUAL boss fights. I had an amazing time fighting Bahamut when I was like 5-6 levels under what I should have been, it felt a lot some of the Summon fights from FF7R with Chadley. These fights are the absolute peak of Crisis Core, and unfortunately they were a high I only got a handful of times, due to how quickly I got overpowered. After doing a ton of side missions, which the game told me I should be doing, I was 1-shotting bosses left and right, and I feel like I was a little robbed of what the game should be like. I didn't even break a sweat on the game's final boss. In the game's defense, I didn't really look for a difficulty setting after I realized how OP I was, I kind of just wanted the game to be over.

Crisis Core's story is really fascinating. I didn't know hardly anything going in, except that I was pretty sure about how things were going to end. I found the new characters like Angeal and Genesis to be pretty hit or miss, but what ground was covered with already existing characters and their relation to Zack was super interesting. Overall, it's a pretty just decent story. What absolutely broke me was the ending. I don't know what it was that hit me so hard, but the last time I cried this hard was at the ending of XC3: Future Redeemed, which is like the emotional zenith of my favorite trilogy of games ever, so that makes sense there. But Crisis Core wasn't the most insane story or anything, so I found myself quite caught off guard. I guess the writers just really knew how to hit you where it hurts.

At the end of the day, I think there is a lot of value in Crisis Core's story, even if the pacing is bizarre. I wish I could replay the game with less of the side shit, as I think I'd like the game better, but given what I did experience, I thought this game was a super solid beat em up in world of FF7 that links Cloud and Zack's story in a super heartfelt way. I am very glad I played.

This is my review of Birthright, a belated continuation of my unfinished FE series replay. I played through this path on Hard/Classic to keep things consistent with my Conquest playthrough.

Gameplay: Still retains the things that I like about Fates' engine from Conquest: stances with pair-ups, daggers are actually a solid addition, ranged weapon triangle, etc. This time around, however, there are infinite grinding gold/exp maps that you can utilize in the world map, which I don't really have too great of an issue with because you can engage with this on your own terms. It isn't forced on the player, although I can imagine it makes an already cakewalk game even easier than it already is. What I will say in this department is that the maps are significantly worse. Not only are they not nearly as memorable as Conquests, a lot of them are re-used. We could get into which came first, and which is technically recycling the maps, but I'm going to lean more towards Conquest's favor as it generally does more to differentiate the maps from other versions in a fun and unique way. Still, was a little disappointing on the map design, especially considering how easy most of them were without grinding. I also felt like Birthright just absolutely showers you in stat boosting items, despite the easier difficulty... I have no metric to prove that so I could be wrong; just a feeling I got as I felt like I got another every other chapter or so.

Music: I actually like Birthright's music quite a bit more than Conquests, as I think it takes the music a different direction than most FE games with the flutes in most of the Hoshidan map themes, and that being a constant through-line for the soundtrack is cool. Just really good overall, enough said.

Story: A lot of the same gripes I had with Conquest's story apply here. I will say, this game feels like a different coat of paint over a traditional FE story, as Birthright's themes feel a lot closer aligned to other entries in the series. This isn't a good or a bad thing to me, just something I wanted to note. What I will say, is that this game feels a lot safer than Conquest, and I felt like it suffered because of it. This game's story just feels boring, as it has the least answers to the overarching plots, and it just feels like standard FE "oh, the neighboring country is invading, guess we gotta fight back" thoroughfare. Very middle of the pack FE story for what it is.

Characters: I feel like this section would be a little redundant, as it's the same set of characters between games. Some of the Nohrian characters get a little bit different characterization in this game, but to be honest it's minute details save for Xander and Elise. I honestly found Elise's presence in Birthright to be a lot more engaging than it was in Conquest, but Xander's was a little worse in an attempt to create this game's "Camus" archetype. This is the section I feel like writing the least about because I've always thought this was the weakest of the 3ds entries in terms of characters, but that's just me.

tl;dr: Birthright is weaker than Conquest almost entirely across the board. I think that it is a good option for people that want an easier and more relaxed FE experience, but it completely abandons any sort of moral uncertainty that Conquest attempts (albeit hamfistedly) in favor of the generic FE themes that we've gotten over the years, and to be honest, not even a great execution of those themes compared to other entries in the series. I just don't see any point unless you were REALLY grabbed by the cast of Conquest and wanted to see what the other side of the coin looks like, but prepare for disappointment, unless you started here.

NOTE: Don't look for my review of Revelations; I will not be playing that dogshit again. In fact, here's a mini-review:

Fire Emblem Fates: Revelations (2015): *
Game fucking sucks, nobody wants to do mundane tasks in a turn based strategy game, and the whole "golden ending shit" ruins the whole premise of moral ambiguity. Lame, weak ass game, not worth anyone's time. Only thing worse than unanswered questions in the other routes is finally getting the answers and they suck balls.

Replayed Eliwood's story focusing on my ranking and here's my thoughts on my latest run of the game:

I still think this game is a little bland; the story is okay and the map design is bleh but I do find some charm to it, which is why I can't resist replaying it every once in a while. I will say, this was my first time playing the game on a real cartridge on a Game Boy SP. It was pretty neat, but the novelty wore off when I started getting to those longer enemy phases later on... I played at least half the game with no animations.
The ranking system is a neat idea, but with extremely weird parameters:

>Tactics = lower turn count, higher ranking
>Funds = higher endgame sum of money + item value, higher ranking
>Combat = higher percentage of winning battles, higher ranking
>EXP = higher number of exp points per chapter, higher ranking
>Survival = don't let anyone die lol

This is fine and all on surface level, but a few of these rankings are based on POOR Fire Emblem playing. In order to get an A or even an S rank, you have to play really stupidly. For instance, I only got an A ranking, which is fine, but the two categories that killed my S rank were "EXP" and "Funds." These two categories are extremely frustrating because they rely on you actively NOT using your resources to your advantage, which is super counter intuitive to LTC runs, which you would expect this to be, as "Tactics" expects you to get a lower turn count to get a better ranking. But rather, if you rely too much on your early promote units, NOPE, EXP is in the tank. Whatever.
But "Funds" is the one that really pisses me off as the expectations shift from chapter to chapter, and if you missed a chest due to turn limit or forgot to steal an item off an enemy last chapter, or shit if you even promoted one too many of your units, it's basically over for you. I ended with a 4 star in "EXP" and a 3 star in "Funds" because I needed to promote a few of my units because they hit the level 20 cap in their base classes, so that way they're not missing out on EXP, but the promotion items are a HUGE chunk of your endgame tally towards the "Funds" score. My only way to maintain all of my 5 star rankings at "Cog of Destiny" was if I replayed the entire chapter with a low level un-promoted team.
This system is a neat idea, if it wasn't so frustrating. There is no clear guidelines in the game, you have to look them all up on Serenes Forest, as well as the fact that the restrictions are super fucking tight to maintain that S rank. And keep in mind: I WAS ON ELIWOOD NORMAL MODE. The game is very very easy, but not enthralling enough to reply a handful of longer lategame chapters because I made an oopsie and tanked my rating in one turn.
I like FE7 but this was an exercise in understanding why it's a fundamentally stupid fucking game. The maps have 0 sauce, and the only map that does (Battle Before Dawn) fumble any chance of that because it's a frustrating dance between grappling with RNG and stupid NPC behavior. Game is a lot more fun when you play it as a straight up ironman and ignore the stupid letter you get at the end.