Best Expansions & DLC That Are Like Full Games

Key Takeaways

• Grand Theft Auto 4’s “The Ballad of Gay Tony” offers a fresh story that shines as bright as the story in the base game.
• Prey’s “Mooncrash” expansion offers replayable and randomized challenges, promising a fresh experience with every run.
• Monster Hunter World’s “Iceborne” expansion introduces a massive new subcontinent, expanding the base game significantly.

At worst, video game downloadable content (DLC) is a way for publishers to slice off sections of a main game and sell them back for a bag full of nickels and dimes. At its best, it’s a chance for fans to get a little more of what they love from the base game in the form of skins, maps, or gameplay mechanics.

While there’s less of a distinction between DLC and expansions in the Internet age, the latter tend to be seen as packages that come with a considerable number of new features, but it’s never guaranteed. However, there are a few beautiful examples of games with expansions or DLC that far exceeded everyone’s expectations, sometimes rivaling or even outshining the base game.

8 Grand Theft Auto 4 – The Ballad Of Gay Tony

More Than Just Liberty City’s Encore

• Estimated Play Time: 14 hours

With each of the open-world sandbox cities being masterworks in its own right, it seems only appropriate that Rockstar would revisit Liberty City to explore its full potential. Unlike Grand Theft Auto 5‘s San Andreas, which became a backdrop for GTA: Online after an excellent offline campaign, Rockstar gave fans a whole new single-player storyline with Grand Theft Auto 4‘s “The Ballad of Gay Tony” and a lesser extent, “The Lost And Damned.”

The expansion delivers a fresh perspective on the city’s nightlife scene, focusing on the flamboyant Tony Prince and his equally wild associate, Luis Lopez, who is as prone to violence as Niko (at least in the player’s hands). The glamorous ride through Liberty’s club culture puts a fresh perspective on the city, packed with over-the-top action, high-speed chases, and more of Liberty’s eccentric creatures in its 15-25-hour playtime.

7 Prey – Mooncrash

Pushing The Simulation’s Engine To Its Limits

• Estimated Play Time: 18 hours

Few additional game modes offer such a fresh feeling as Prey‘s brilliant and endlessly replayable “Mooncrash,” which likely inspired another of Arkane’s games, Deathloop. Players are tasked with reliving an attack on a moon base via computer simulation to find out what really happened to the survivors during the disaster.

Every run brings something new with randomized challenges, thanks to its near-bottomless roguelike design. Every success helps improve the odds by granting access to better weapons or items on subsequent runs.

Whisked Away To An Island Of Madness

• Estimated Play Time: 20 hours

The fourth mainline entry in the Elder Scrolls series, Oblivion, may have brought about the blight of microtransactions via the “Horse Armor” DLC, but it also brought about the best example of a great expansion experience.

“The Shivering Isles” embraces the janky NPC AI, haunting atmosphere, and suped-up bloom effects that Oblivion is known for by giving the Hero of Kvatch an entire island of Oblivion to explore, one shaped by the demented mind of its master, the memorable turophile, Sheogorath.

5 Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey – The Fate Of Atlantis

A Sprawling Journey Across The Most Fantastic Realms Of Greek Mythology

• Estimated Play Time: 22 hours

If the monsters sprinkled around the landscape of Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey didn’t tip the series out of the “historical fiction” video game category and into the bucket of fantasy, its final DLC, “The Fate of Atlantis,” plunged it into the deepest waters of myth.

Of course, the series had always had elements of the supernatural, but the massive “Fate of Atlantis” supersized the already massive map of Odyssey with epic scenery of four different realms: Elysium, the Underworld, and Atlantis itself.

4 Cyberpunk 2077 – Phantom Liberty

Making Good On A Dystopian Promise

• Estimated Play Time: 23 hours

Even after years of patches, Cyberpunk 2077‘s legacy is still tinged with the negative reaction it received upon launch due to its initially buggy state. This was compounded by the disappointment felt by Cyberpunk fans, whose misplaced marketing campaign strategy had perhaps overhyped a tad.

Its first and only expansion redeemed the game in the eyes of many fans by demonstrating that CD Projekt Red had learned hard lessons from the base release and felt, in many ways, like a brand-new game. “Phantom Liberty” introduced Dogtown, a walled-off and expansive corner of Night City with a palpable sense of fear and rot, teeming with morally ambiguous characters and decision-centric missions, as well as new abilities, vehicles, and more dynamic combat options.

3 The Witcher 3 – Blood And Wine

An Intoxicatingly Rich And Colorful Addition

• Estimated Play Time: 29 hours

The base story of The Witcher 3 hardly left anyone wanting for more with its hours of gameplay and highly replayable story, but CD Projekt Red was in the mood to keep giving with its second expansion, “Blood and Wine.” The first expansion, “Hearts of Stone,” was also an incredibly generous offering that added new mechanics, narratives, and locations.

However, “Blood and Wine” truly feels like it could have been packaged and sold as an entirely standalone campaign with the expansive new region of Toussaint, a vibrant place unspoiled by open war but tainted with dark secrets, perhaps because of the way that Toussaint feels so fresh and separate from the rest of The Witcher 3‘s world.

2 Elden Ring – Shadow of the Erdtree

A Full-Blown Sequel Disguised As An Expansion

• Estimated Play Time: 40 hours

Hardly anyone could complain that Elden Ring lacked enticing, explorable spaces or challenges. And yet, FromSoftware completely blew fans away with “Shadow of the Erdtree,” a game that rivals and, in some ways, surpasses Elden Ring in terms of beauty, lore, and challenge.

“Erdtree” kicked up the intensity of fights after opening with a somewhat less-spicy-than-usual offering of the base game, but the soulsborne fanbase, being glutten for punishment, naturally ate up the challenge with glee.

1 Monster Hunter World: Iceborne

An Entire Subcontinent Of Titanic Prey To Hunt

• Estimated Play Time: 150 hours

The frost-themed expansion to Monster Hunter World could have been its own offshoot, but Capcom saw fit to release this massive release as an expansion, adding a massive amount of content that drastically expanded the base game and making good on the “World” moniker.

“Iceborne” transports hunters to the icy regions of the Hoarfrost Reach, a vast, new subcontinent (and one of the biggest in the Monster Hunter series) teeming with colossal, fearsome creatures that tested even the most seasoned hunters, chief among them the elder ice dragon, Velkhana.