PlayStation Plus Essential Games for August 2025, Explained

The PlayStation Plus Essential game lineup for August 2025 has more PS4 games than native PS5 games, although all are playable on PS5. These last-gen offerings won’t be around for long on PlayStation Plus, given the announcement that the service would have a stronger focus on PS5 games starting in January 2026. Regardless, these three games for August 2025 are Lies of P, DayZ, and My Hero One’s Justice 2.

Here’s what to expect from each as they come to PlayStation Plus Essential subscribers on August 5th. All three will be available to add to your library until September 1st.

1) Lies of P

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Lies of P is the headliner in August and deserves the top slot. This acclaimed 2023 Soulslike from relatively new developer Round8 Studio was released to great reviews, earning an average score of 82.

Lies of P takes after titles like Bloodborne and is based on Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio novel, but it isn’t just a patchwork of other franchises. Instead, this RPG excels because of its ability to push forward and put its own spin on its obvious influences. Its parry-heavy combat is exhilarating, more responsive than many of its more methodical peers, and mandates at least some form of mastery. The array of standard enemy types is impressive and they all fit the meticulously detailed world, but its bosses truly show off what this game is capable of. These often multi-stage fights are the climactic showdowns they should be and offer a nigh unbeatable sense of satisfaction once they’re slain. The customizable weapon system and array of special Legion Arm abilities also yield many different ways to play, so combat is as deep as it is rewarding.

While sometimes a little hard to follow, its narrative also doesn’t rely solely on item descriptions and notes. It’s a little more direct and has a ton of its own interesting and well-constructed lore that goes beyond Collodi’s novel and asks grander questions about humanity. Its lack of a voiced protagonist hampers these themes a bit, but its ability to be slightly more straightforward when compared to other Soulslike stories makes its better parts easier to absorb.

Round8 has dropped a few patches over the years that have changed the game somewhat significantly. After making some of the bosses a little easier after launch, the team added a few cosmetic items, as well as crossover gear from Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty. This all pales in comparison to the most recent large update, which added two new easier difficulty modes, two boss rush modes, and a handful of quality-of-life features, such as a small ticker in the upper right signifying how much more Ergo players need to level up, being able to level up at any checkpoint, and the ability to cash in Ergo chunks at the level up screen, just to name a few.

This update coincided with the Overture expansion, which will not be included for PlayStation Plus subscribers. This hefty $29.99 DLC features multiple new areas, a prequel story, a handful of completely new weapons, and a sizable serving of boss fights. Overture shows the expertise Round8 accrued in making the base game, as Overture contains some of the best bits of Lies of P.

2) DayZ

DayZ is the longest-running title on this list, as this game came to consoles in 2019 (a few months after its official PC launch). It was panned near its release, earning an average score of 41. However, this score is a bit inaccurate now and doesn’t paint the full picture, because DayZ has seen many, many updates in those years. It still gathers around 50,000 concurrent players at any given time only on Steam. It even hit its all-time concurrent player count on Steam in 2024, 11 years after its early access release.

DayZ is a survival game that drops players on a large landmass and tasks them with, well, surviving. Players are meant to overcome the elements to find loot and resources, which means dealing with the infected as well as real-life human players. People can interact with each other in all sorts of ways, meaning that it isn’t strictly competitive. It’s possible to collaborate with others as well as stab them in the back, which leads to the type of emergent storytelling that has made this genre (and this game in particular) incredibly popular. 

DayZ has seen a ton of patches. As such, this means the game has seen hundreds upon hundreds of fixes and content drops, as evidenced by its comically long list of patch notes. However, the console versions of DayZ aren’t as robust as the PC original.

DayZ has a few extra premium DLC packs not included in this PlayStation Plus offering. The Last King of DayZ and Frostline packs both contain ammo, gear, and skins and are $29.99 and $39.99, respectively. The $26.99 Frostline expansion, not to be confused with the cosmetic-heavy Frostline pack, came out in 2024 and is more substantial. It features a new snow-covered biome, Sakhal, and that alone changes how the survival mechanics work since extreme cold makes many tasks that much harder. Frostline was initially controversial, but developer Bohemia Interactive has addressed some complaints — like the lack of lootable places — in subsequent patches.

3) My Hero One’s Justice 2

My Hero One’s Justice 2 is a fighting game based on the hit anime series My Hero Academia. It came out in 2020 to tepid reviews (with some exceptions) and received an average score of 69.

This 3D arena fighter is stacked with fan service and touches on various sections of the show. The bigger roster (the base version has 41 characters) and anemic story mode give users a playable version of said show, but it’s unlikely to have much novelty outside of that. The basic arcade mode and grueling mission mode aren’t much better, either. It’s more of a party-based fighter (with an occasionally wonky camera) that doesn’t have as much depth as other more traditional fighting games, meaning there’s not much to mine after learning a character’s basic set of normal attacks, counters, and unblockables. Its environmental destruction and flashy super animations give fights a decent amount of spectacle, though. 

My Hero One’s Justice 2 saw some support after launch. It received a photo mode, an English dub, Intruder events with hard CPU fighters that pop up after some online matches, and balance changes. It also received plenty of paid DLC, too, which included 10 new fighters and eight costume packs. There are two $19.99 season passes, but those only contain the fighters and different item packs that are locked to the season pass.