Each expansion focuses on the titular character, from how Marisa became a Guardian (which involves meeting a mysterious girl) to Seign’s quest to tackle some issues in the Galdean Empire. As for The Chapter of Markus, it sees him venturing with Nowa and Carrie as they enter “Menhir’s Distortion” into a strange new realm.

Perhaps we’ll learn more about the Skeleton King’s past. Time will tell. Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is available for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, PC, and Nintendo Switch. Check out our review for the launch version here – we gave it a seven out of ten, praising the visuals and old-school approach.

Of course, Rabbit and Bear Studios isn’t slowing down on the franchise. It announced a sequel last year, though further updates are still pending.

The Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes DLC roadmap is here! All three story expansions are on the way:

Marisa’s Chapter – Feb 27
Seign’s Chapter – Mar 13
Markus’ Chapter – Apr 3

Which of the story expansions are you most excited to play?#EiyudenChronicle #百英雄伝 pic.twitter.com/oAC9n2EvKn

— 【公式】Eiyuden Chronicle (百英雄伝） (@eiyuden) February 6, 2025

Several other titles will become available for Standard on consoles starting February 5th, including Another Crab’s Treasure, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, and, surprisingly, Starfield (Xbox Series X/S). On February 6th, Madden NFL 25 will become playable through EA Play for Ultimate and PC Game Pass.

February 13th sees the debut of Kingdom Two Crowns on Ultimate/Standard for cloud and console. Then there’s arguably the biggest release for the service – Obsidian Entertainment’s Avowed. It’s available on February 18th for Ultimate and PC Game Pass on cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X/S (with reviews going live on February 13th).

Several titles will also leave the service on February 15th, and it’s a significant list. Of course, Game Pass subscribers get a 20 percent discount if they want to keep any of them permanently. Check out the titles below:

• A Little to the Left (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Bloodstained Ritual of the Night (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• EA Sports UFC 3 (Console) EA Play
• Indivisible (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Merge and Blade (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Return to Grace (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Tales of Arise (Cloud, Console, and PC)

While next year looks even more jam-packed with incredible adventures, what are some of the best role-playing games from 2024 that deserve your attention? Join us as we sift through the dozens of choices and present the 20 best RPGs of the year that must be experienced.

Path of Exile 2

For all the complaints against its rewards, end-game, map layouts, etc., Path of Exile 2 is still an incredible action RPG, even in early access. Each class and their Ascendancies presented multiple new options; the Skills are impressive while combat feels visceral; and the bosses present some of the best encounters in the genre. The fact that such a sizable end-game is available right now, complete with pinnacle bosses, is also incredible. Yes, there are plenty of things to improve, but Path of Exile 2 is proving just as addictive as its predecessor and will receive double the amount of content before early access ends.

Slitterhead

A bizarre mix of action and body horror from Keiichiro Toyama, the creator of Silent Hill, Siren, and Gravity Rush, Slitterhead practically screams, “Not for everyone.” As Hyoki, an amnesiac spirit who must slay the Slitterheads, you can take over the bodies of different NPCs and leverage their powers. Combat can be enjoyable, but technical issues, jank, and repetition blemish the experience. It’s an acquired taste, though, and some may enjoy the body-hopping-focused gameplay while basking in the sheer weirdness of it all.

The first one, titled “The Chapter of Marisa”, will arrive next month, and will focus on Marisa’s past as a Guardian “while exploring with an enchanted girl companion.” Next, “The Chapter of Seign” will release in September, and will tell the story of “how Seign and his allies influenced the saga from within the shadows of the Galdean Empire.”

Finally, “The Chapter of Markus” will release in October, and will focus on Markus, Carrie, and Nowa, who “venture through the mysterious Menhir’s Distortion and uncover long-buried secrets beyond the gateway”. 

Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC. Read our review of the base game through here.

However, its upcoming story DLC will also receive an announcement. Further details have yet to be revealed, but the previous roadmap outlined three DLC chapters, each focusing on a different character. The first is out in August and stars Marisa – Seign and Markus get the spotlight in September and October. A release date for Marisa’s DLC will likely be revealed next week, so stay tuned.

Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is available for PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PC and Nintendo Switch. Check out our review, where we gave it a seven out of ten, praising the visuals, story and cast while criticizing certain aspects of the combat, the side quest design, and some mini-games.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak

If you talk to every NPC and exhaust all the dialogue available, there’s no escaping a 100-hour playthrough in Trails Through Daybreak. In Trails games, NPCs each have an ongoing story of their own that updates as you progress key story milestones. The main narrative of Trails Through Daybreak has tons of text on its own, not even counting the NPCs. Trails Through Daybreak’s English word count is well over 1 million, making it the second-largest script in the series to date. By contrast, the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy contains 455,125 English words while The Bible contains about 1 million. The ‘high speed’ fast forward toggle mitigates the time this can take by a bit, but unless you’re a super speed reader, sifting through the reams of text available here will be time-consuming. Interestingly enough, Trails Through Daybreak doesn’t feature the series-staple fishing minigame, so players can focus more on the intricate storyline and characters.

Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth

The latest entry in the Yakuza series also happens to be the largest. Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth features a turn-based RPG combat system, a distinct shift from Yakuza’s familiar beat-em-up formula. The 100-plus hour playtime is partly due to the turn-based combat, but mostly because Infinite Wealth is so chock-full of minigames. Infinite Wealth features well over a dozen minigames, some of them being full-blown games with progression and a grind all their own. For example, the Dondoko Island minigame has its own control scheme, which is fitting considering what it involves. Within Dondoko Island, you build an island resort destination by scrounging up resources and then placing objects around the archipelago. Other minigames are more basic, though no less intriguing, such as the returning karaoke songs, as well as fun parody games inspired by Pokemon and Crazy Taxi. But Infinite Wealth has much more than just minigames to occupy your time. The main campaign consists of 14 meaty chapters that take anywhere from 50 to 60 hours depending on playstyle, which makes it one of the longest campaigns in the Yakuza franchise to date.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is a massive game unto itself despite it covering ‘just’ the middle section of Final Fantasy VII. Rebirth retreads some of the most beloved parts of the original Final Fantasy VII and recontextualizes them: the Gold Saucer, Barret’s Corel story, and Cloud’s famous flashback sequence all take place in this middle chapter, not to mention all the twists and deviations toward the end. Much like the previous game on this list, Rebirth goes all in on minigames. You have Chocobo Racing to enjoy, as well as the array of Gold Saucer attractions. Even without the minigames, Rebirth boasts a seamless open world rivaling the size of Final Fantasy XV’s map. There’s a checklist of stuff to do in the open world, but the Protorelic quest is particularly noteworthy since it features some core story content and culminates with a showdown against a familiar character making Rebirth one of the longest games of 2024.

Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes

This turn-based JRPG features a wide number of allies you can recruit. There’s a total of 120 recruitable allies in this game, though less than half of them don’t join you in combat, instead helping you out by giving you intel and whatnot. The process of recruiting these characters can range from merely speaking with them to doing fetch quests, so it’s not quite as time-consuming as it could’ve been. The range of other side activities helps make Hundred Heroes a 100-hour RPG.

Dragon’s Dogma 2

Dragon’s Dogma 2 doesn’t have the longest story campaign on this list, but the open world littered with side quests and activities will take you some time to explore for sure. Some of the side quests are substantial affairs, taking you around the world map and requiring multiple steps to complete. With over 40 side quests, Dragon’s Dogma 2 is not wanting in content. That said, the real heart of Dragon’s Dogma 2 lies in its procedural gameplay. Enemies react and behave in unpredictable ways, further compounded by the interactable environments. This leads to many hours had just messing with different builds and finding different ways to defeat monsters. It’s one of those games where you spend hours just messing around experimenting with stuff.

Granblue Fantasy: Relink

Granblue Fantasy: Relink’s campaign is swift and punchy, with about 24 hours or so of gameplay time. While it’s generally a well-received story with memorable characters, the real substance of this game revolves around its endgame content and co-op component. Think of Monster Hunter and you have the right idea. Raids feature difficult bosses and dungeons that you can tackle solo or with others. Leveling up characters and gear is a fixture of Granblue Fantasy: Relink’s endgame gameplay loop, and can take 100s of hours until you feel a sense of completion. All in all, this is a nice hybrid package that includes your traditional RPG story alongside a grindy endgame raid loop to dig into.

Rise of the Ronin

As an open-world samurai game, Rise of the Ronin features a lot of checklists and content to explore. There’s a total of 750 collectibles with 100 fugitives to save in Rise of the Ronin, some of which are very well hidden. The map in Rise of the Ronin measures 10.4 square miles. By comparison, Ghost of Tsushima’s map rounds up to 11 square miles. Though the main campaign comprises only three chapters, there’s still lots of side quests and stuff to collect in the open environment, making Rise of Ronin one of the longest games of 2024 so far.

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Classic

In the video game world, you can’t really get any bigger than World of Warcraft. The Cataclysm expansion had the most lengthy story at its time of release, which is saying a lot considering WoW’s legacy. For reference, 25 players are polled on HowLongToBeat stating that Cataclysm takes around 385 hours to complete the main story and additional content. Cataclysm is the latest expansion to receive the Classic treatment, which helps smooth some things over with conveniences, but also adds additional wrinkles into the mix. Some additional features include the ability to use mounts, transmogs, and pets across all accounts, a streamlined auction house, and overhauled difficulty.

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree

Just about everyone was surprised to hear that Elden Ring’s expansion featured another huge open-world zone separate from Elden Ring’s Lands Between. When we actually booted the game up and played ourselves, that feeling of discovering an ever-expanding map hit us all over again just like the base game. The Shadow Realm is far larger than the game’s director, Hidetaka Miyazaki, said it would be in previews. The new zone is roughly the size of Limgrave, Caelid, and half of Liurnia of the Lakes combined. Add to this the additional verticality of the unpredictable terrain and you have another solid 60 or so hours of content on your hands, even if some of it is just empty space with one of those silly cookbooks waiting at a dead end.

Helldivers 2

As a live service co-op shooter, Helldivers 2 doesn’t have a definitive endpoint due to a lack of a traditional campaign or story. Still, despite having a mission-based structure, players clock in an average of 50 hours in Helldivers 2 according to HowLongToBeat. The mission structure revolves around 40-minute timers with a list of objectives to complete. There’s something to be said about completing stuff in 40-minute chunks. The compact time limit lets players know what they’re getting into while giving a sense of accomplishment, encouraging further commitment to the game’s loop. Getting to max level is one of the clear milestones you can achieve in this game, and that feat is typically accomplished around or just above that 50-hour timeframe.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

Some new quality-of-life features, like always leaving battles on Auto, are also coming. It also fixes the Rune Shop’s “Change Run” function for selecting other party members. In the meantime, Nintendo Switch players can look forward to a dedicated patch on July 3rd, fixing an issue where Performance Mode may not work.

It also fixes several lingering issues with story progression, dungeon gimmicks, localization, UI control, and graphics. There should also be a fix for Support character time not counting despite having them in the party.

Stay tuned for more details when the update goes live. Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is available for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, PC, and Nintendo Switch. Check out our review here. Aside from patches, the developer is also working on three DLC chapters.

Upcoming patches (June 20, 2024）

Thank you for your continued support of Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes. Based on valuable feedback from our players, we are preparing an update patch for all platforms to improve the functionality and stability of the game. Thank you for your… pic.twitter.com/XnAX2Vug09

— 【公式】Eiyuden Chronicle (百英雄伝） (@eiyuden) June 21, 2024

Taking recently to Twitter, for instance, Rabbit and Bear Studios shared a roadmap of upcoming content and DLC planned for Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes over the course of 2024. In addition to the cosmetic packs that have already been released for the game so far, the developer also intends to release new story DLC chapters focused on Marisa, Seign, and Markus in the months of August, September, and October respectively.

How extensive these additions will be or whether the studio has other additions planned beyond these chapters isn’t something that it has gone into just yet, but hopefully, more details will be shared on that front in the not-too-distant future.

In our review of Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, we gave it a score of 7/10, saying, “As an aggressively old-school role-playing game, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes suffers in areas like combat, side quest design, and balance, but makes up for it with the story, extensive cast, and strong presentation.” Read the full review through here.

Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC. Rabbit and Bear Studios says it already has plans in place for a sequel. Read more on that through here.

Which of the upcoming Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes story expansions on our Roadmap are you looking forward to the most?

August – Marisa Chapter
September – Seign Chapter
October – Markus Chapter#eiyudenchronicle #百英雄伝 pic.twitter.com/H3Qn3aNywN

— 【公式】Eiyuden Chronicle (百英雄伝） (@eiyuden) May 30, 2024

There’s also a bug preventing access to War Mode, the grid-based combat system. The developer told IGN, “We are aware of issues surrounding the current version of Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes on the Nintendo Switch, and we’re addressing them as a maximum priority. We are diligently researching technical improvements for Switch performance issues, aiming to release this patch at the earliest possible opportunity.”

Rabbit and Bear will address the above progression blockers in Version 1.0.4 (noted to be “nearing completion”). In the meantime, Version 1.0.3 is available and fixes several issues relating to stability, optimization, game balance, and more. The full patch notes aren’t available, so stay tuned for further updates.

Along with the Nintendo Switch, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is available for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, and PC. You can read our review, where we praised its aesthetic, old-school elements, and story-telling, though its main protagonist, Nowa, combat, and enemy balance could use some more refinement. Though it’s early days yet for the title, the developer is “moving forward” with a sequel.