PlayStation Plus Essential Games for March 2026, Explained

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Here’s a brief explainer on all four PlayStation Plus Essential games for March 2026. All four will be available for subscribers from March 3rd to April 6th.

4) PGA Tour 2K25

Image COurtesy of 2K

PGA Tour 2K25 is, as stated by its title, is a golfing game that came out in 2025. It reviewed well, earning an average score of 81.

PGA Tour 2K25 is a standard golf game through and through, so that can limit its appeal, but it’s pretty solid at what it does, especially when compared to its underwhelming predecessor. 2K25 has a slew of modes that get players to the green, as is expected, with some added tweaks that enrich the experience. It now has a more forgiving golf swing that is made for newer players, as well as the Evo swing modifier meant for more hardcore players that can be applied to different difficulties. Even though the new off-course part of the career mode that lets players craft their golfer’s personality is quite dry, the new courses, wider array of customizability, and better visual fidelity are noticeable upgrades. The ability to cut the filler out of tournaments or automate some of the holes helps clean up the pacing, too.

Since it is a 2K sports game, there are plenty of ways to spend money. There are free and premium paths for its season passes (players can also buy older season passes at any time), and these tracks yield all sorts of various cosmetics as well as gear that can boost performance. And while many of the seasons are full of rather standard golf attire, one season revolves all around 2K’s looter shooter series, Borderlands. A few of the seasons also brought new courses and events to the game.

3) Slime Rancher 2

Image Courtesy of Monomi Park

Slime Rancher 2 is a cozy-adjacent management sim that first came to early access in 2022 before hitting its 1.0 release in 2025 and releasing on more platforms. Because of that staggered release, reviews are a little harder to nail down, but it has an average score of 76.

This sequel is heavily based on the skeleton of the original, as both see players traverse a somewhat serene world and raise a collection of slimes. Slimes get their own pens back at the base and it is up to players to feed them. These little guys poop out plorps that can be used to buy upgrades.

More advanced slimes require different tactics — ones that can jump quite high, for example, need taller pens to contain them — and can even be melded with other slimes to create hybrids. Rarer slimes poop out more valuable plorps, so players are heavily encouraged to foster these more valuable creatures in order to buy better upgrades. This loop is rather simple and not all that challenging, so it’s more centered on relaxing and finding a peaceful groove than killing bosses or amassing a huge army. It can get a bit repetitive, given its simplicity, amount of mechanics borrowed from the first game, and how long it takes to get every upgrade.

Most of Slime Rancher 2’s content and changes came before its 1.0 launch. However, Monomi Park has released updates that softened some crafting requirements, boosted a few resource drops, added gadget variants, yielded more toys for each slime type, contained various user interface improvements, and included various quality-of-life settings that ranged from being able to pin blueprints to having new pots that yield a certain type of rare plort.

2) The Elder Scrolls Online Collection: Gold Road

Image COurtesy of Bethesda Softworks

The Elder Scrolls Online Collection: Gold Road is the 2024 chapter of the popular MMORPG. It was received well and garnered an average score of 80.

The base version of The Elder Scrolls Online is already playable for PlayStation Plus subscribers for no extra cost. This bundle in this month’s PlayStation Plus lineup includes the 2024 expansion Gold Road, as well as the seven previous expansions. It’s a stunning value, even if it doesn’t include literally every piece of DLC for the game.

The Elder Scrolls Online can be played solo and in first-person (although this viewpoint can be limiting) and has a substantial lot of voice acting, meaning it is somewhat geared to those who love Bethesda Game Studios’ titles while (obviously) still being an MMO. These expansions add new classes, quests, storylines, locations, and other features. For example, Gold Road in particular adds scribing, which adds the ability to make custom skills.

1) Monster Hunter Rise

Image Courtesy of Capcom

Monster Hunter Rise is the 2021 entry in the beloved RPG series and was ported to subsequent platforms (including PlayStation) in later years. It was received incredibly well and came in at an average score of 87.

Following up Monster Hunter World was a daunting task, but Rise, no pun intended, rose to meet the call. It has all the same satisfying monster hunting RPG mechanics that have players teaming up to take down large beasts in order to craft better gear that helps make the next beast a little easier to slay. Rise adds a new mount and mechanic called the Wirebug, both of which help streamline traversal and combat. The dog-like mount gets players to their destination faster, while the Wirebug allows for players to grapple around with ease. This can trivialize some fights and the level design, but the newfound agility is hard to discount and makes sense within the context of Rise streamlining the core experience even more.

As is the case with Monster Hunter games, Rise saw plenty of free and premium updates. Many of its post-launch updates, though, were built into the PlayStation ports, as they came two years after its initial Switch release. These updates that came after the PlayStation launch included 3D audio, more monsters to hunt, new quests, additional gear, a higher level cap for armor, more skills, an expanded follower system, layered weapons, another locale, new items, and more, all of which were doled out across multiple updates.

Rise also has a stagger amount of DLC, all of which can contain cosmetics, stickers, armor, music, gestures, hairstyles, or weapons. However, Sunbreak is its beefier and more traditional expansion. This $39.99 add-on that’s not included for PlayStation Plus subscribers (like all the other DLC) comes with an additional storyline, hub, new monsters, tweaks to existing monsters, and a slew of small yet useful quality-of-life changes.

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