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For the past month, we have been sharing regular suggestions for what we're playing on the Game Pass service. It's an opportunity for us to highlight underrated titles or simply to talk about our favorite games. For this week, though, we have to kick things off by addressing the elephant in the room: the latest unfavorable changes to the Game Pass subscription.

Starting October 1, Microsoft announced a bevy of changes to its subscription service, the most significant coming to the Ultimate plan — which offers the largest game library plus immediate availability to latest releases from Microsoft's game studios. It'll now cost $30 a month, increased from $20. Understandably, users expressed dissatisfaction, with many being vocal on online platforms and in comment sections about their plans to terminate their plans.

It's the end of an era for Game Pass as the once celebrated gaming bargain has ended. Now, players must consider if $360 a year for Game Pass's top tier provides value to them, particularly when daily expenses gets more expensive.

Should you maintain your membership, or seeking justifications to continue justifying it, read on for our current picks. These feature a top-tier Metroidvanias of all time, a 2025 Game of the Year contender, and a delightful JRPG sequel. Or, if you're inclined to cancel your subscription, see our guide on modifying or ending your Game Pass subscription.

The Lost Crown: A Prince of Persia Adventure

If you do happen to stick with your Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription, you might require additional reasons to justify it. A strong argument for the higher fee is that you’ll now have access to a collection of Ubisoft titles. This provides plenty of Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry games for your monthly payment, but the standout benefit is Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown.

This side-scrolling adventure makes fantastic use of the series, returning to its origins in a trap-filled labyrinth that’s a thrill to mantle around. Pair that with exceptionally rich, most varied combat the category includes, and it creates a top-shelf Metroidvania. Add in both Hollow Knight: Silksong and The Rogue Prince of Persia and you’re already breaking even on three months of your subscription cost.

Blue Prince

This investigative puzzle title Blue Prince launched with impressive numbers and a dedicated community on PC platforms, but console adoption was buoyed at launch by membership programs (it was also available on PlayStation Plus). The word of mouth combined with its simple availability eventually helped the game reach 2 million players.

Trying a title for several sessions to discover if it's your jam or not is a key advantage of Game Pass, 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 large inheritance, but only if you can find the mansion's secret room. The catch? The building's design is constantly changing, making Blue Prince a roguelike with fresh clues to uncover regularly. After several sessions with it and have been drip-fed secrets and hints related to the enigma at the core of the story, and I'm curious to see where the game goes as I progress further.

The Prince's Edition: Ni no Kuni 2

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 makes it tonally consistent with our preceding two recommendations? I'll never tell. What I can share, though, is that Ni No Kuni 2 is delightful follow-up to a top role-playing game of all time. Although featuring charming animation-style visuals and focus on younger characters, Ni No Kuni 2 addresses serious themes, opening with an apparent terrorist attack on a modern-day city before quickly transporting the main character (the literal president) into an alternate dimension where they end up smack in the middle of a historical power struggle. Unlike its predecessor, the battles are real-time — think more like a action RPG than a Pokémon one — and features a genuinely deep and detailed simulation in which you must oversee a realm. While called the Prince's Edition, but it feels more like king shit to me.