Birthright and Conquest are full games in their own right. While the first five chapters are the same in each game, the player gets to pick a side (kingdom) to experience the story in a different way (technically, the choice is already made when you buy one of the games). The two paths greatly differ in the maps, objectives, enemy types and numbers, although some of the maps are the same in both games after a path was chosen. Namely the big story events where the two kingdoms face off against each other.

In terms of game design, Birthright is similar to Awakening (meaning that you can grind at your leisure) while Conquest is like old school Fire Emblem games (no grinding). If you want to experience the other side of the story regardless of which version you bought, then it can be bought as DLC for $20. The third path (Revelations) allows the player to pick neither kingdom at the branching point; this is basically an expansion, so it's always going to be $20.

There's also a special edition of Fire Emblem Fates for $80 which packs all three paths on a single 3DS card.

Yes.

And you legitimately believe this?

Nintendo isn't even willing to pay third parties to get games on their platform. Why would they be willing to pay reviewers to get good reviews?

Because Nintendo is actively hostile to third parties, whom they see as competitors to their own first-party software sales. Getting more third parties means that they couldn't even dream of getting away with making Mario Tennis their holiday game, for example, but because the software is in reality utterly mediocre they must resort to bribery and threats to generate false flags, thereby increasing sales and propping up the plutocrats who run the "Big N" (the "N" originally stood for "No ethics" but nowadays refers to "Nanomachines," which one sage in the industry tried to warn us about).

As far as you're concerned I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.

As far as you're concerned I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.