Xbox Game Pass Adds Two Highly Rated Games Today

20.02.2024 - 10:49 / gamerant.com / Xbox Game Pass / Pam K Ferdinand / Xbox Game

Two more games, Tales of Arise and Return to Grace, are being added to Xbox Game Pass on February 20. Rumors about Tales of Arise possibly coming to Xbox Game Pass began at the beginning of the month when Bandai Namco’s action RPG briefly showed up in a “coming soon” announcement on Xbox Wire. The game was quickly scrubbed from the list, but not before eagle-eyed readers spotted it, shared it on social media, and dug up the cached version of the article. As it turns out, the announcement was just made a week too early.

PlayStation gamers need not feel left out, though, because Tales of Arise is also coming to PS Plus Premium on February 20, along with a number of other games. Originally launched in September 2021, Arise won Best RPG at The Game Awards that same year and currently has an aggregate review score of 87 on both Metacritic and OpenCritic.

A perhaps lesser known, but equally interesting, game is the indie adventure title Return to Grace, which was also added to Xbox Game Pass on February 20. A walking sim set in a 1960’s retro sci-fi world, Creative Bytes’ game follows space archaeologist Adie Ito as she quests to uncover the final resting place of Grace, an AI that once held the status of a god and served as the caretaker of the solar system. In the thousands of years since she was shutdown, the AI’s personality has fractured into separate entities, which accompany Adie as she solves puzzles and attempts to return to Grace.

At least one more game is expected to be added to Xbox Game Pass before the end of February. Inkulinati launched in early access on January 31, 2023, and will finally be getting a full release on all major platforms on February 22. Though its aesthetic calls to mind Obsidian’s Pentiment, Inkulinati by Yaza Games is a turn-based strategy game inspired by medieval manuscripts. Using a substance called Living Ink, players can draw a range of beasts to serve as soldiers in their army and take down opponents.

An Xbox Game Pass subscription remains a great value for gamers eager to try a range of titles for minimal cost, from AAA hits like Diablo 4, which is coming to the service on March 28, to hidden indie gems like Brotato, which has been installed more than a million times since it was added to Game Pass on January 30. And with Xbox Cloud Gaming, available to Ultimate subscribers, many of these games can be streamed to PC and a variety of mobile devices.

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is the highest tier of Microsoft's flagship game subscription service that offers over 100 game titles that you can play with a single purchase, making it one of the most outstanding value propositions of the Xbox ecosystem to date.