Good evening. You are listening to Three Moves Ahead, and I'm your host, Rob Zakeney. Join me today, we welcome 3MA founder, Troy Goodfellow.

Hello, hello, hello. And we're also joined by freelance writer, Fraser Brown.

Hello! So, this week, our topic comes to us via our monthly Patreon backer poll, which you can learn more about at patreon.com slash NMA.

We put the lesser, and I'm using

air quotes around lesser, we put the lesser total war games up for a vote to see which we

get the spotlight this month. And the result was a clear win for Medieval 2, which I have to

kind of surprise me, because it sometimes feels like the total war game that inspires the least

reaction among

fans of the series. Now, I actually like it a lot, and we'll get to that in a bit, but I'm

curious if anyone else views its place in the Total War canon similarly to me, right? I sort of felt

it was overshadow, it stood in Rome's shadow a little too much and was maybe still too

close to medieval one to really like find its own identity within the series. What do you guys

think? It's kind of like almost my favorite of the old ones, even though Rome has this,

you know, important spot. And it will always be, even with all its flaws, it will...

Despite the fact it's a bad game.

It will always be probably my actual favorite.

But medieval, too, is actually the one that I spent the most time playing.

I think it's because when it launched, which would be like almost over 10 years ago,

I had like, I'd failed an outside course at uni.

I don't know how to describe them to people from across the Atlantic.

It's kind of like the courses you do that aren't your major, I guess.

And I'd failed this course by not going to an exam because I was asleep and sleeping is

...