Fulqrum Publishing and Ukrainian studio Best Way announce today that the highly-anticipated next instalment in the beloved strategy franchise, Men of War II will see its full release next year, in 2024 via Steam, Epic Games Store and other digital store fronts. The decision to postpone its originally planned September 2023 release date was made after a careful analysis of the large amount of data and feedback gathered through a series of public playtests running through March to August, as well as issues found in the final rounds of internal testing.
The game is already content and feature complete and the public playtests confirmed the high quality of the core gameplay. However, the sheer scope of the title, which contains 3 narrative and 2 historical campaigns, Conquest and Raid dynamic campaigns, each playable in 4 variations of competing nations, 15 PvP and 8 PvE multiplayer modes with over 20 maps and more, means that the developers were not yet able to bring Men of War II to the state of technical perfection they strive towards for its release – especially when faced with the continuously difficult conditions in their home country of Ukraine.
Maxim Kamensky, Producer of Men of War II at Best Way, explains:
“We loved working with our dedicated community of fans during multiple Playtests and we gathered immense amounts of data and feedback. In fact, we received so many great suggestions we decided to implement, that the original schedule did not allow us to iron out all the bugs and issues in time for the September release. We feel that our fans deserve to receive a game in a completely polished and bug-free state and ask them for just a little more patience to allow us to deliver such a high quality product.”
“Men of War is a franchise that helped define the WWII Strategy genre, and players rightfully have extremely high expectations of Men of War II,” said Nikolay Baryshnikov, CEO of Fulqrum Games, “Best Way is as passionate about the game as its fans and we are happy to support them in their endeavour to create the best game in the series to date. Delaying the launch is never pleasant, but it is always the preferred option to releasing a product that might not meet the players’ expectations.”
