Another Nine Games Will Leave Xbox Game Pass Soon (December 31)

Oh no! Outer Wilds ...

Has anyone played Embr? Looks a bit chaotic.

Outer wilds has been in and out of game pass a few times.

I can't recommend Scarlet Nexus highly enough, it's fantastic and severely underrated.

I really need to get around to playing Outer Wilds. Missed it the first time round and so the challenge is on!!

Two games on here I downloaded when I got my Xbox a year ago which I still haven't played. It's a nice problem to have, but I never get to everything I want to play on Game Pass!

Tried a couple of these games but never got into them scarlet nexus was big deception for me , and outer wild too strange , maybe I should try pedestrian before it leaves .

@armondo36 i liked it, I did not love it tho, I played once and did not really care much enough to play 2nd route, and I did have quite high expectations for it. Ofc that’s very subjective. I’d advise anyone to at least give it a shot

Decent list of games, but also constantly on sales.. so I'm not as worried.
Would be nice if additions followed similar quality.

@munstahunta if you like puzzle games, pedestrian is pretty clever, it got repetitive for me though. I liked Gorogoa more, just more interesting and better art.

@YessMasster which route did you play?

@mousieone kasane

@YessMasster well her route spoils Yuitos anyway. The game didn’t need multiple routes as much as shifting narratives more in line with Fatal Frame.

I'm going to have to get a move on in echoes of the eye, my own fault for buying dlc without buying the main game.

@themightyant Scarlett Nexus is worth it. I didn't actually finish it, such is the nature of endless backlogs, but I was near complete. Combat is complex enough that getting back into it wouldn't be easy though. It's one of those games that so different to what you expect from it you're not sure if you like it, and then once you get into it realize there's not much else like it and start sequel begging

(I bought it the first decent $40-45 sale. Worth the price )

outer wilds i just dont get whats good about it i was annoyed and frustrated what a waste of my time

It's remarkable, but I never tend to miss any game that's being removed from Game Pass.

Seems like a few of the predicted games are going to be removed after all.

@themightyant Hah, yeah, that sounds like my pacing (I still have P5R ahead of me! Bought it 3 times now.... still unplayed. Like Skyrim I only got so far 3 times... ) And I'd also confirm Tales of Arise comes first, that's a once a generation gem right there.

I also haven't finished Automata! I got reasonably far, shifted off it, and never quite picked it up again. Plus I have to be in the right mood for "downer" settings like that.

Sekiro....I think I saw the first boss once.... maybe. Did I mention I suck at Soulsborne and Nioh? Because I do. Did I mention I added Elden Ring to the backlog on the sale? Because I did....

And I also have to finish GoT as well. Same thing with "downer" setting. I play it stealth so I play it really really slow, I was playing it last year, making good progress, took a break, and then just never felt like going back to burning body parts hanging from trees and just never got back to it.

I do have to finish HzD to get onto HFW, but that probably won't be this year because P5R will devour this year I'm sure.

The only one of those leaving games I played was The Gunk. It was good...I think it falls apart near the end a bit but the rest is solid.

I actually think I might own Outer Wilds though. I think it was one of the givaways for watching Xbox's E3 event via Mixer when they used to have the mixpot giveaways.

@themightyant I'm fully expecting that, really, but I may still have to do P5 before then maybe.

I agree with GoT. I mean, it's basically a Ubisoft style game, that's what SP does best, but I agree, I do thing the repetition of really doing the same thing kind of got to me too. I liked the unique side quests like the fox shrines and all, but the random standoffs and such eventually just grind me down, and, it seems best as a stealth game, but stealth games can get tedious even without repetition in them. I WANT to go back and finish it, and yet any time I think of it, I think of the mood and the tedium and put it off again.

That said, I still haven't finished HzD or GoW18 either. HzD it's because I really WANT to play slow, and GoW it's because I was so freaking bored by the second lake trip that I just didn't want to play anymore. The sequel looks to remedy that possibly from things I've seen, so I have to get myself to finish the first before getting to the second. But I know I'll end up finishing Soul Hackers 2 and Star Ocean before ever getting to it!

But my backlog is so huge between things partly started, things never started....P5 ,P5S, then like half the Trails series and Yakuza series, all 100+ hours each....... I haven't even followed most of the small games. Tinykin might have the make the list though. May have to try cult of the lamb too.

@mismattia Wasn't that games with gold game? Think shows I own it. But never purchased it.

@themightyant My issues with 2018 are that the wide design isn't quite wide enough, it feels like an on-rails PS2 game. Which I technically don't mind, I actually prefer the old GoW series to 2018 by a fair margin, mixed with bland puzzles that take too much time to search for Waldo, and a severe lack of combat variety. It's basically repeating the same combos, and the annoying shield/healer enemies drag combat out far too long for each battle. The early gameplay video from ragnarok I saw looked a little more like "classic" GoW in that regard, so I'm hoping the sequel is a bit more fun to fight in.

Yeah, I happen to be a general fan of Ubisoft design (though I still have the previous 2.5 AC games in the backlog!) but I've always felt that SP is basically a "better Ubisoft". Horizon is too, but SP has a history of being a "better Ubi" with inFamous too. Though they may have gone a little TOO Ubi with GoT. Horizon definitely does its own thing to a degree. Part of that own thing is that being in the "open" world is really dangerous. As in, not a good idea, and you have to go around the periphery a lot. It's not always meant to just dive into every corner of the world. AC doesn't have robo hunter-killer T-Rexes if you go from Alexandria to Thermopolae via the direct route.

But I 'm in the same place with the series. I really WANT to play through Odyssey and Valhalla....but I always have to choose which 100+ hour game I want to play and so far P5, Trails, Yakuza (OMG I have so much ground to cover in those two) keep winning

At least I feel better that I'm stuck on DIFFERENT time sinks than you. Tales of is a series of decently long but very manageable sized games. I mean I spent like 1.5-2 months on Arise, it was manageable. Same with Vesperia.

But no wonder you have free time for other games, you're not stuck in the Yakuza and Trails series. Yakuza games, if you're doing everything, which means the minigame economy games are required, are easily 100 hours each (I have 120h into 0, and I'm still wrapping up the cabaret game, there's still a lot of actual game left. I have probably 800 more hours of Yakuza to go. And double that for Trails/Legend of Heroes. That series is like what 12 games of 150 hour length? Amazing series for JRPG fans, just amazing, but there are times I want to throw it in easy and just cheese bosses to get it to move on because it is just so long.... But it's a once in a lifetime kind of series, too.

@themightyant Zesteria and Berseria were kind of a low point for the series. Not that they're bad games at all, actually I need to get back to them myself, they're also only partway played, they're good, but they're just a little flat, especially when compared to how high the high notes of the series hit. Zesteria gets panned, unfairly I think, Berseria is the prequel, that people praise a bit more. Vesperia is just classic. Some pan it, but I think that's more about not being able to get into old-school action JRPGs and the cliche formats. It's a PS2 style game that was an XB exclusive at launch. Personally, I say if you haven't played Vesperia you owe it to yourself. And Arise really matches that high note (but is a lot more modern in game design.) I have so many '00's era JRPGs including their '10's era remasters and remakes, I probably never need to buy another game for the rest of my life....but I still keep doing it...

LOL, lucky for you, Symphonia remastered launches in exactly 8 weeks (including on Xbox though this site would never make you think so ) ....you don't have long to wait to buy it again for deep discounts after cashing in on the sealed copy before it was too late!

I'm still hoping they remake Abyss. That game was really good, very dated now, hard to deal with, but a really good game and story, and it's just crazy that it's trapped on PS2, and the only remaster is on 3DS.... Since they're going through the back catalogue and remaking things hopefully that one comes out in the coming years.

Normally I'm against the modern world of just releasing remasters of old games, but this series is worth it, there's good games and good stories trapped on ancient hardware with incredibly dated gameplay. It'll rarely be a true GOTY contender, or compete with XC or Trails/LoH for combat depth, but for JRPG fans, they're almost always a fun, very memorable game.

After Arise others (except Vesperia) will be a let down, I think, but it's just such a worthwhile game, I can't recommend against it first! Like Gunk it does kind of fall apart in the final act IMO. There's a lot of buildup that just kind of falls on its face, where the last act feels more like post-game content dragged out. It's a monotonous dungeon crawl with mostly big miniboss enemies as the only enemies and only one checkpoint/fast travel mid-dungeon, with some ridiculous OP minibosses at the end to unlock another fast travel at the final boss, and it feels like the main story is already mostly wrapped up. There's no actual post-game, and during this time you can travel to other places and do optional superboss "postgame" type quests before finishing up the actual final dungoeon which just returns you to the save/new game screen when done. And the actual ending is just kind of....there? That's a shame and keeps it from 10/10 maybe, but everything up to that point is so worth it it's forgivable. Just keep in mind MOST of the threads are resolved, if you do all the side content, before you actually go into the "final" dungeon, and your story is basically done at that point, while the final dungeon and boss resolves the "main" thread, just think of that place as the post-game with a few story riffs attached. Tales does tend to do that sometimes.

@themightyant LOL!

It's dated, but I just find the story and characters so charming and memorable. And Yuri is one of the best anti-heroes of all time IMO. At least in the anime sphere. His audio is a little weird in the remaster. They added voice lines but for some reason didn't get Troy Baker back, even though he wanted to do it (cost maybe? He was a nobody the first time, that's the game that put him on the map.), so it's weirdly jarring where some lines have a mismatched voice.

3 Personas, like 6 Yakuzas, and who knows how many Trails/LoH games I have pending......I don't even have time to eat with this list!

@themightyant Yeah, I really have no idea what might have happened with that. They got the rest of the cast, and just never even bothered asking him. And it's obvious he'd have done it even on the cheap. I guess they either didn't want to spend the money on a big name, or just assumed the money would be too much without actually checking. So weird, and such a shame, it definitely stands out. I didn't actually know about all that when I played it, and just kept thinking they did a bad job on the recording because it sounded like two totally different recordings between lines. Then found out about the whole actor swap.

Already bought scarlet nexus when it's discounted, so I'm safe 😃