Best Way have announced the release date for their WW2 RTS Men Of War 2, and it’s coming in one of the busiest months of the year so far for big PC releases. Arriving on September 20th on Steam and the Epic Games Store, Men Of War 2 joins the likes of Lies Of P, Cyberpunk 2077’s Phantom Liberty expansion, Pay Day 3, Mortal Kombat 1 and Life By You in the fight for your attention in the wake of Bethesda’s epic space RPG Starfield, which launches just two weeks beforehand on September 6th.
Even if you’re only interested in one or two of those big September games, Men Of War 2 certainly doesn’t look like it’s going to be lacking in things to do. It will come with three single player campaigns at launch, and they’ll follow the Americans, Soviets and Germans as they march across the breadth of the Western and Eastern Fronts. To get a glimpse of them in action, watch the release date trailer below.
The American campaign is called “The Falaise Pocket” and will pit you against the Germans on the western banks of the river Seine. On the Soviet side, the “Thwarted Blitzkrieg” campaign will see you slowing down oncoming German tank forces. And finally, “On Their Own Soil” will see you take the role of an older soldier during the collapse of the Third Reich.
In addition to those three story campaigns, Best Way have announced an additional pair of historical campaigns as well: the American ‘Operation Overlord’ mission in Western Europe and the Soviet ‘Operation Bagration’ against Nazi Germany. Best Way claim these will involve “more dynamic choices” in how you pick your battalions and units compared to the story campaigns, but we’ll have to wait and see how that pans out in practice.
Two extra modes – Raids and Conquest – round out Men of War 2’s single player options. Raids will be a series of 16 randomly generated battles to fight across, while Conquest is described as a “dynamic campaign” that will let players pick a path for their army to conquer territory.
Finally, there’s multiplayer, which will have 20 maps designed by Best Way (a handful of which I sampled earlier on in the year), 13 PvP modes and five PvE modes (the latter of which will be playable in co-op with up to four other players).
That’s a lot of men and a lot of war, and potentially a whole lot more of both, considering it’s going to have full mod support from day one as well. I’ve certainly had a good time with what I’ve played of Men Of War 2 so far, and I’ll be interested to see how it stacks up to Company Of Heroes 3, this year’s other major WW2 real-time strategy game. I’ll have hopefully played enough of Starfield by then… Assuming it doesn’t need the same number of patches as the number of planets it has, anyway.
Men Of War 2 is coming to Steam and the Epic Games Store on September 20th.