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Over the last few weeks, we have been sharing regular suggestions for the games we are enjoying on the Game Pass service. This is a chance for us to highlight underrated titles or simply to talk about our preferred titles. This time around, however, we have to kick things off by tackling the obvious issue: the latest unfavorable changes to the Game Pass subscription.

On Oct. 1, Microsoft announced a series of adjustments to the service, with the most notable coming to the service's Ultimate tier — which offers the most games available plus immediate availability to new games from Microsoft's game studios. The new price is $30 a month, up from $20. As expected, users expressed dissatisfaction, with many being vocal on social media and in comment sections about how they were going to cancel their subscriptions.

This marks the conclusion for the service as the former “best deal in gaming” is no more. Now, players must consider if $360 a year for Game Pass's top tier is worth it to them, particularly when everything else in life continues to rise.

Should you maintain your membership, or looking for reasons to keep it active, read on for our current picks. They include one of the best Metroidvanias of all time, a 2025 Game of the Year contender, and a charming role-playing game follow-up. Or, if you're inclined to do away with Game Pass, refer to instructions on modifying or ending your Game Pass subscription.

The Lost Crown: A Prince of Persia Adventure

Should you decide to keep your Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription, you’re probably going to need additional reasons to use 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 titles for your monthly payment, but the best perk is Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown.

The 2D Metroidvania brilliantly leverages the franchise, returning to its origins in a trap-filled labyrinth that’s a thrill to mantle around. Combine this with exceptionally rich, most varied combat the genre offers, and it creates a premium exploration game. Pair it with both Hollow Knight: Silksong and The Rogue Prince of Persia and the value becomes clear on three months of your subscription cost.

Blue Prince

This investigative puzzle title Blue Prince debuted to strong sales and a committed player base on PC platforms, but console adoption was supported initially by membership programs (it was also available on PlayStation Plus). The word of mouth alongside its simple availability eventually helped the game reach 2 million players.

Checking out a game for several sessions 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 explore Blue Prince. You take the role of the inheritor of a property and large inheritance, but provided that you can find the mansion's secret room. The catch? The mansion's layout is ever-shifting, making Blue Prince a procedural game with new information to uncover regularly. I've spent a few hours with it and have been gradually uncovering mysteries and puzzle clues related to the enigma at the heart of its manor, and I'm eager to discover how it develops as I uncover more.

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

Is this suggestion Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom simply since the version included on Game Pass is the Prince's Edition and that makes it tonally consistent with our preceding two recommendations? That remains unconfirmed. What I will tell, however, is that Ni No Kuni 2 is excellent sequel to one of the best JRPGs of recent memory. Although featuring charming animation-style visuals and emphasis on youthful protagonists, Ni No Kuni 2 doesn't shy away from heavy topics, beginning with an seeming act of violence on a contemporary metropolis before immediately throwing the main character (the literal president) into an other world where they find themselves involved in a violent Medieval-era coup. Unlike its predecessor, the battles are real-time — think more like a Tales game than a Pokémon one — and features a truly complex and detailed simulation in which you must oversee a realm. It might be the Prince's Edition, but that sounds more like royal treatment to me.