 Greetings laddingtons, welcome to Age of Empires 3 Definitive Edition. For as a foremost shoutout to my Czech friend and supporter Jan for gifting me this fine game. As I might have mentioned before, my schedule isn't as flexible as it used to be so I won't make a Let's Play series of this game but rather just a quick view of it. I did play it quite a bit back in the day and I've always been a great fan of all Age of Empires games so I thought it's only reasonable that I do a look at this fine game. And also like the aesthetics of it, the game really captures the adventure and exploration feel of the European powers back in the day. So you can see the gameplay before you hear you can be the main European powers and this edition they've also, to my great joy, added the Swids. So as you see before you right now we have a representation of Stockholm. And if you look on the aesthetic castle to your left, it's the old Trekroner castle. It unfortunately burned down and was replaced by what you see today if you go to old town Stockholm. So otherwise it's a quite nice representation you have before you here and since we are on the topic of the Swedes as a civilization in the game we are going to show you a few fun things in the deck builder here. So basically when you play Age of Empires 3 you can get shipments from your home city in the form of cards. And I saw this fun card here. Suse Strömming ships two fish crates. So basically Suse Strömming is a very particular Swedish dish which I must admit and I'm sorry to all fellow Swedes here. I am not a great fan of it and it smells horrendous but some people love it and it's a part of Swedish culture. So it was nice to see the Suse Strömming make an appearance in the game. Then we have some other cards that I thought to show you over here. Vasa and this is a reference to the great battleship Vasa. It sunk just outside of Stockholm on its maiden voyage quite a tragedy. So if you go to Stockholm today you can go to Vasa Museet which is a museum where they have the ship on display. So it was not completely lost to the ages but it was a great and rather humiliating incident for the Swedish crown back in the day. But that's a nice touch to include that there. Then also we have allotment system and this is a reference to the fact that quite similar to how the Romans did it. That a legionnaire got a bit of land after their military service. Same thing in Sweden where the soldiers got a torup. So it's a small cottage and some land after a military service. So that is represented by this fine card here. Then to my great joy I saw that you had a card called Svea Lifeguard Svea Livgarde. And that is actually where I did my military service. So whenever I play this, if I have the time to play this game, I will include this all at all times. So good stuff, good stuff. So anyway that was all for the cards and also in this definitive edition except for the Swedes. They've also included the Incas as a playable civilization. Now the Incas of course were a powerful empire, South America until the Spanish adventurer and explorer and conquistador Francisco Pizarro came with a rather small band of Spanish conquistadors to conquer the empire. Quite impressive speaking in pure military terms how they could conquer it just being so few men. Then also a difference between this definitive edition and the previous edition is that the former Sioux has been renamed to Lakota. And the developers of this edition actually consulted with Amerindian individuals to make the representation of the tribes more accurate. So that's good. Same thing here. They were previously known as the Iroquois and I will see if I can get this pronunciation correctly. Haudenoushwani, no idea how you actually pronounce it but I'm guessing something like that. So anyway they made some changes to the gameplay of the Amerindian tribes and I'm not going to get into that all too much but I want to show you something else. We have historical battles and here we have Algiers 1516 and you're playing as the Barbary pirates and the enemy is the Spanish. Now of course I would want to have it the other way around considering the Spanish and French. They did great service for Mother Europe back in the day. What happened during this time was that in North Africa they staged slave raids that reached all the way up to Iceland. So basically the countries along the Mediterranean coast and the Atlantic coast, so France, Spain, Portugal, France again on the Atlantic side, England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, Iceland were all subject to slave raiders from the Barbary coast. So one day the Spanish had had enough so they decided to implement their will on some of the states there. Same thing, the French during the 19th century also had enough of the slave raiders so they simply conquered a lot of the territory. But in this battle you are defending against the Spanish so you can continue your slave raids. But yeah I might play it at some stage anyway just for the historical knowledge. And speaking of historical knowledge we have also story mode here and I will show you this fine introduction to the campaign. So I played this back in the day and I will show it to you now. So the Knights of St John, more commonly known as the Hospitallers, they fared a bit better than their brother organization or even rival organization of the Templars who as I mentioned on my Instagram the other day they got betrayed by the Pope and the French King Philip on the fateful day of Friday the 13th of 1307. But the Hospitallers managed to survive and they eventually landed in Malta where they successfully led the defense against the Ottoman invaders and also the capital of Malta is named Valetta after the Grand Master Shunde Valette. So let's look at the cinematic. The story of why my family first came to the New World begins with the attack on Malta the last stronghold of a dying order of Crusader knights. This much is fact. My ancestor Morgan Black was with the Knights of St. John when they defended the island from Sahin and the Ottomans. The rest, well like most family stories, it's hard to separate the truth from the legend. Morgan, the Ottomans have landed a thousand Janissaries led by Sahin the Falcon. Elaine Magnan still commands the knights and he says we must hold them at the beach. We'll make our stand here. The Crusades are dead. Your knighthood is all that remains. A relic. I'm not ready to die just yet Falcon and I don't intend to see our knighthood broken. It is already broken Morgan. Will you break with it? Move the crossbow to the forward walls to attack the Janissaries. Defend the fort at all costs. So now we get to see a bit of the gameplay as well. So here we have Janissaries, the Ottoman elite troops and they were actually taken as slaves from Eastern Europe and then trained to be the elite troops of the Ottomans. So that is the story of the Janissaries. And I'm not going to play through this entire scenario but I just wanted to show a bit of it. I was actually in Malta when I was 15 and got to know about this highly inspiring story of the defense of Malta. So it's always been an inspiring event for me personally. So anyway I know it's a common topic to discuss gaming and I know some good men have a legit criticism against gaming culture etc. For me playing Age of Empires all the games have greatly helped in my historical interest and I've always managed to balance it in quite a good way. Now of course if you are in a situation where you play too much and you skip the gym etc. it's obviously not a good idea to do it too much. But doing it in moderation after you've done your other duties that's absolutely fine and especially a game such as this if it really captures a good spirit if it teaches you some history if it gives you a higher interest in history it's all good in my view. So Age of Empires 3 great aesthetics I'm very impressed by the new graphics here as well and yeah I might play it some if I have more time in the coming time but who knows. So anyway that was all for this video just wanted to have a quick look talk a bit about the Swedish historical references I do have a Swedish history video incoming in a few days so stay tuned for that and yeah that being said have a great week in the head and thank you for watching XOXO BOOM!