🔗 Share this article

For the past month, we've been running weekly recommendations for the games we are enjoying on Game Pass. It's an opportunity for us to highlight underrated titles or just discuss our favorite games. This time around, though, we have to kick things off by addressing the elephant in the room: Microsoft's recent unfavorable changes to the Game Pass subscription.

On Oct. 1, the company revealed a series of adjustments to the service, with the most notable affecting the Ultimate plan — that provides the most games available plus immediate availability to latest releases from Microsoft's game studios. It'll now cost $30 monthly, increased from $20. As expected, users expressed dissatisfaction, and numerous voices on social media and in discussion forums about how they were going to cancel their subscriptions.

It's the end of an era for Game Pass as the former “best deal in gaming” has ended. Instead, players must consider if $360 a year for Game Pass's top tier provides value to them, especially as daily expenses gets more expensive.

If you're keeping your subscription, or looking for reasons to continue justifying it, check out our current picks. They include a top-tier Metroidvanias of recent years, a 2025 Game of the Year contender, and a delightful JRPG sequel. Alternatively, if you're inclined to do away with your subscription, see our guide on how to change or cancel your membership.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

Should you decide to keep your Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription, you might require more excuses to use it. The best case for paying the extra cash is that it includes to a collection of Ubisoft titles. You’ll get multiple Assassin's Creed games and Far Cry titles for your $30 a month, but the standout benefit is Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown.

This side-scrolling adventure makes fantastic use of the franchise, returning to its origins in a dangerous maze that’s a thrill to mantle around. Pair that with some of the deepest, diverse battle mechanics the genre offers, and it creates a premium exploration game. Add in both Hollow Knight: Silksong and The Rogue Prince of Persia and you’re already breaking even on a quarter of your annual fee.

The Blue Prince Mystery

The first-person puzzle game Blue Prince launched with impressive numbers and a dedicated community on PC platforms, but console adoption was supported initially by subscription services (it was also available on PlayStation Plus). The word of mouth alongside its ease of access eventually helped the game reach 2 million players.

Checking out a game for a few hours to see if it suits your taste or not is one of the core appeals of the service, and anyone looking to get lost in a puzzle should check out Blue Prince. You take the role of the heir to an estate and significant wealth, but provided that you can locate the hidden chamber. The challenge? The mansion's layout is ever-shifting, making Blue Prince a roguelike with new information to discover every day. After several sessions with it and have been drip-fed secrets and hints surrounding the mystery at the core of the story, and I'm eager to discover how it develops as I uncover more.

Ni no Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom - The Prince's Edition

Am I recommending Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom just because the version included on the service is the Prince's Edition version and that creates thematic harmony with our previous selections? I'll never tell. What I will tell, though, is that Ni No Kuni 2 is delightful follow-up to one of the best JRPGs of recent memory. Despite the whimsical Ghibli aesthetic and emphasis on youthful protagonists, Ni No Kuni 2 addresses serious themes, beginning with an seeming act of violence on a modern-day city before quickly transporting the protagonist (the literal president) into an other world where they find themselves involved in a historical power struggle. Compared to the first game, the combat is more action-focused — think more like a Tales game than a turn-based title — and features a truly complex and complex management in which you must oversee a realm. It might be the Prince's Edition, but that sounds more like royal treatment to me.