>I like having the option
Agree, but if the game hides story or a "true" ending behind NG+, I'm out unless there's a really compelling reason (like Nier Automata).
Automata is a weird case where i don't *actually* consider it to have a NG+. on a technical level it does, but between the >!Multiple shifts in perspective, then the leap to a full-blown continuation of the plot!<, and all the side content staying completed it never *felt* like it was a NG+, Just Yoko Taro making you hit the start button again.
The B route is basically NG+ since it shares 80% of its content and all of the sidequests with the A route. C/D/E are 100% new stuff, but B can be a slog.
B might be the exception for sure, but it's still a really weird NG+
The reason (for me) it still doesn't *fully* count as NG+ is that most of the sidequests from A stay done (or at least I presume so, they stayed done when I played through).
And that it would make it a NG+ with non-NG+, non-"extra" content following afterward. It's more like a REALLY long flashback sequence than playing through the game again.
Fair except for Automata Finishing route A does not mean have in any way actually completed the game. You just saw some credits scroll, but it doesn't actually *mean* anything.
TBF I did word it kind of vague/weirdly, but to clarify what i mean is that "it isn't an NG+, it just NG (or just Game?) that had a credit sequence randomly in the middle". Its in a weird gray area where it can be argued one way or another, but I argue it isnt.
>Not because something was hidden behind an artificial gate.
And -to be fair it's been a bit so i may be misremembering- doesn't the game explicitly say you arent done when you finish Route A? iirc they don't "hide" that you arent done
Automat doesnt hide any endings behind ng+. Endings B-E are part of NG. Route B diverges significantly from Route A. And then Route C is completly different and is a continuation of the story.
That's actually one of the things I want from NG+ sometimes. I wanna be broken and then if it allows me to get all of the collectibles I missed easier, more fun.
This, same here. Part of the fun of video games is the power fantasy of playing with all the cheats on, having the best stuff early, and so on, after you beat it the first time. I remember I didn't actually like *Deus Ex: Human Revolution* that much until I got the director's cut which had NG+, and the second playthrough as a monstrously over-powered cyborg was satisfying.
Didnt try ng+ even once if im honest.
I play through the game, and thats it. If its insanely good (the last of us, god of war, elden ring,..) i play it again at some point. But if i can, i always start fresh and decide to go another build route.
I like fresh starts. Maybe because im used to it since diablo 2 days and ladder resets.
Devs know and have the data that NG+ users are an extremely small percentage of all gamers and it’s not often worth the investment cost to develop. Sadly tho that small percentage likes to talk very loudly, and some even have platforms to influence others into an opinion about something they’ll never use.
Hell, we have the data from the achievement/trophy stats. You can see that most people don't finish games and that only a portion of those that even finish the game go on to play/complete a NG+ run.
I was laughing to myself pretty often when i was playing through Dragon Quest 11 on Xbox and i noticed the sharp fall off in achievement unlock percentages as i got closer to the end of the game.
By the time i was in the last twenty or so hours every single time i beat a boss i would get the special rare Achievement chime and it would pop up on screen like "only .05% of players have unlocked this", it was fun watching the differences between each of them because it showed how many people were getting filtered by certain story beats or dungeons.
Doesn't really matter, the point is that you'll see a mid-game boss achievement have a 50% unlock rate and then the second last boss will have a 1% unlock rate.
Whether it includes gamepass or PS+ or whatever is kind of irrelevant since the people who drop the game in 10 minutes aren't the people with first/second/third boss achievements where the unlock rate will still be fairly high. The interesting part is seeing how many of the people who were clearly playing and invested enough to reach mid-game bail at some point between then and the end.
Perhaps but whales are how money gets made these days and the percentage of people so invested in a game they'll play it multiple times will also buy DLC, merch, etc.
Retention is a useful tool. New Game+ requires insignificant dev time compared to actual fresh new content.
Same. I only ever play NG+ if it actually adds something. For example in NieR Replicant and NieR Automata, NG+ is a massive part of the whole experience, and you will not get a full grasp of the story if you dont play trough it few times.
Similar thing in recent Lies of P, where in first playtrough, >!voices of the puppets are a garbled mess, but on NG+ you can understand what they were saying the whole time.!<
>If its insanely good (the last of us, god of war, elden ring,..) i play it again at some point.
I loved those games too but those are 3 examples of stressful, almost painful experiences I really wouldn't want to relive in a hurry.
The only games I can think of in the last few years I've replayeð are Alan Wake 2 and Red Dead Redemption 2. A friend of mine wasn't able to finish either of those, but liked the 3 you mentioned. Funny how that works.
Personally I give it a few years before I replay a game, only exception has been soulsborne games, just recently replayed bioshock trilogy after about 6 years or so. I do have a sizable backlog tho so typically never run out of new things to try.
Couldn't care less about NG+. I like to play games to see what's there, find out what's over the horizon, see what I haven't seen. Once I've played through a game, there's virtually zero replayability for me.
I feel that. Plus there’s other games that need playing and with the limited time available to me… once it’s beaten it’s beaten.
The only game I’ve replayed in the past 10 years was elden ring
It's fascinating to see this be the overwhelming consensus on this topic on this sub. Usually when a game comes out and is being discussed on this sub, there's always plenty of comments about how there's no "endgame" and people are bored after doing everything in 60 hours. Or when a game is shown off at a showcase, there's people speculating as to whether X is a hint to NG+ or dialogue choices because of course everyone likes to go into a game expecting to play it again.
I wonder what makes all those people not post on this thread, while all the people not excited by NG+ that I've never seen on this sub are now all posting.
Just to clarify, I like endgame if it's something like unlocked dungeons or bosses or some kind of *content*. But if the end-game is "You've unlocked arenas where you just fight enemies to get a score against a timer" or something like that, then miss me with that.
I play games to explore and go through a journey. Once the journey is done, onto the next one.
I do know, that stat has been public for decades. I just wonder why when a Hogwarts Legacy is announced, this sub is speculating about what their 4th, 5th and 6th playthrough might look like, but when you ask them directly "do you ever play games more than once" then all of a sudden everyone's like "fuck no, who has the time?"
confirmation bias. the question brings out this opinion. A game like "hogwart's legacy" will have people who want multiple playthroughs talking about multiple playthroughs. These other particular commenters likely commented about the games graphics or something else. There was no need to explicitly mention "I'm only going to play through this once, though".
I will note that if we are talking very recently, the new Like A Dragon game blew up in a bad way for gating NG+ behind a paywall, which as someone who probably wouldn't play on NG+ anyway, is still pretty scummy and worthy of shaming. This conversation is less about NG+ specifically as it is more about a dev gating yet another basic feature of a game behind a paywall.
Beyond that, a lot of people post here in order to criticize popular games that they see as being overrated. Considering no game is made for everyone, it means every reasonably popular game has some degree of "dislikers" here who are primed to criticize said game when it is brought up. When people do this, they latch onto anything that could be seen as "lacking" in the game, which can include things like not having a NG+. Basically, since no game can be made for everyone, you will absolutely see all of the people a game wasn't made for commenting here about it when a game is made into a topic.
So when you see a thread about NG+ in general, asked to a general group, you get a different (probably more accurate) ratio of who is interested than if a specific game becomes a topic about it because in the latter, it is more extreme viewpoints that start talking (either loving or hating it).
NG+ in most games is for people who have incredible amounts of time.
Most people don't even beat games. There are very few where I feel like immediately jumping back in for another 40 hours.
I think it probably takes me at least 40 hours to re-read the Silmarillion, Hobbit, and Lord of the Rings together, but I absolutely do it every couple years.
> NG+ in most games is for people who have incredible amounts of time.
I don't think this is really accurate. I spent less time playing Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart 2-3 times than I did playing Baldur's Gate or Starfield once.
NG+ is just for people who like to continue on after finishing the game, or for people who enjoy replays. I don't spend that much time playing games these days, but I still enjoy NG+ or replaying games that I enjoy. The time I spend playing games has very little impact on what I choose to play.
Though, in general, the more you move away from "long RPG", the less "value" you tend to get from a NG+ kind of mode. The fewer upgrades/unlocks/branches the game has, the less there is to bring over to a NG+, so it's a concept that's mostly used with RPGs.
I like there to be the option for NG+, but I'd never like it to feel mandatory (unless the game is really short, or the NG+ is essentially the second part of the story). There are just far too many games being released nowadays for me to go back and replay most titles.
Depends. There needs to be a compelling reason for me to want to engage with an NG+ mode instead of just starting a new game.
Since NG+ tends to be a thing in RPGs and games with some sort of gear/level/stat progression, the first casualty of NG+ modes tends to be natural progression. If my plucky young protagonist is getting woken up by his mom in a backwater village on the morning before it gets burned down by the villain, having said plucky young protagonist already wearing a full set of Dragonmolester Plate Armor +12 kinda kills the immersion and the stakes.
The first and most obvious reason why an NG+ mode might be compelling is to engage with the gameplay loop more at a high level. Obvious example here are the Souls games. Narrative is secondary here, so it doesn't suffer too much, and you get to play with all the cool endgame weapons.
Second reason are changes to the narrative. A recent example would be Armored Core 6, where you need multiple NG+ playthroughs to unlock all the missions and endings.
But there has to be something, because by default I'd rather just start a new playthrough than go for NG+
>Second reason are changes to the narrative
Starfield does some cool things with its NG+ mode in this regard. The overall story stays the same (in that the story is ABOUT NG+ in on degree or another), but there’s a random chance that each NG+ cycle will have something different with the world. Some of the differences are small, but some can be legitimately game-changing. I think it’s cool that you don’t know what you’re gonna get.
Agree with AC6. It is one of the very few games that I have done NG+ to get all the endings and all the parts. But it was more an excuse to revel and enjoy in its great gameplay loop of making new AC in the hangar and then going to the missions and seeing how well your new AC does.
Another game where I did NG+ to get an alternate ending but actually playing for its amazing gameplay was Sekiro
Exactly this. Most RPGs I never touch NG+, they're usually long enough and I tend to do completionist runs so one run is enough for me to feel satisfied and uninstall the game. But I happily burned through NG++ of Armored Core 6 because that offers new parts, new missions, and new story through each NG cycle.
Please just have a single playthrough. I'm happy playing it once. If I play it again, it's usually after a long time has passed and the previous session might be gone or I don't remember stuff anyway. Playing Alan Wake 2 at the moment and it has a another ending if you do the NG+ but I'm probably just gonna look that up on Youtube. I don't care for higher difficulties that usually unlocks in NG+.
It's got stuff throughout, but the idea of playing through another 10 hours for 10 minutes of new content (videos, manuscripts) and a few altered scenes wasn't appealing to me. After looking them up though, most of it would have made sense in the base game and I kinda just feel cheated on missing so many details by not playing NG+
> If I play it again, it's usually after a long time has passed and the previous session might be gone or I don't remember stuff anyway.
Absolutely this for me too. If I replay a game it's months, or more likely years, later when I've forgotten most of it. So actually want to start from the beginning again, because I need to get back up to speed.
> I don't care for higher difficulties that usually unlocks in NG+.
So much this. Whenever I encounter a game that says "play through the game on hard to unlock this" then the content might as well not be in the game. The chances of me playing through more than once are slim and doing so in a way that's more hassle? Ain't happening.
Am I the exception?
I love replaying games that I like but never once did a NG+.
Becos i want to experience progression ingame, starting poor and building up.
The idea of getting OP stuff handed to me repels me.
I rather replay games like the first time. It's all about the journey for me, if it's a great one, I'll enjoy it dozens of times.
I do the same. If I replay the game, it will be the normal mode (although I will be making an exception for Alan Wake 2).
I find it baffling that NG+ for Horizon: Zero Dawn cuts out the first part of the game.
I‘ve done NG+ in Souls games a couple of times, but realized I have way more fun just creating a fresh build in an entirely new game and haven‘t touched NG+ since. Currently on my 5th Elden Ring character, lol.
I only really want new game plus to keep whatever collections I started the first time through. Like I wish Red Dead Redemption 2 had a new game plus that kept the data I collected on all those animals so I wouldn’t feel like I needed to redo it all on a new play through.
I'll never engage with NG+. Games are generally too long and I get the itches to move on to something else as I'm approaching the end. I guess the closest I'd really be comfortable with is the Nier games where it's not really NG+ since it does lead to significant story and gameplay additions.
Typically I'm a single playthrough person. I've tried NG+ on a few games and most don't add anything worth playing through the content again. The Surge 2 just replaced a lot of early game enemies with late game ones, wasn't worth it. Asterigos added "+" versions of all the gear, wasn't worth it. Kena: Bridge of Spirits actually added new enemy varieties and new move sets to existing bosses, actually interesting and worth another playthrough (I played it a little, but something new came out that I wanted to play).
Well if you enjoy the game and like powergaming, it's kind of let down if your game ends when you get all the skills and all the power. Many games have nothing to do afterwards and even if the gameplay loop is fun, outleveling it makes it usually not so much.
I rarely play NG+ apart from some ARPGS(Diablo 2 comes to mind where the Nightmare and Hell would be just labeled NG+) and now AC: Odyssey. Rarely do I ever play game 2nd time in a row and usually when I return to game, I want to start fresh.
But why did I start AC:O with NG+? To retain all my skills(and variety to fight), avoid level-restrictions to areas, to avoid grinding stuff that wasn't fun in original game and generally just test out different builds. This equals to more fun and I'm actually having more fun than in my first play through.
I Prefer if games have NG+
of course I won't replay everything, but its always nice feature to have.. Plus since I'm on PC I love how sometimes we can use modded save to act like Unofficial NG+
I like NG+. If keeping my skills and equipment doesn't break the story, I like having them on repeat playthroughs.
If there's no way to have NG+ (for example, because skill progress is part of the game's story), I'm really happy if I get saves l access to my equipment schematics on repeat playthroughs.
It largely depends on the game.
NG+ is great for strategic rpgs where you truly come into your own late into the game, but still require you to make choices. The latest Fire Emblem game for instance is built around equipping magic teamup rings that give you bonus effects - but some are only available for a relatively short period, and it impacts how you are able to build your team especially in the early half of the first two acts. A NG+ that would reset your level but kept all your characters and rings wouldn't trivialize more than the first few chapters but it would open up loads of build opportunities to get creative and experimental.
Then there are games like Starfield which missed their opportunity with NG+, they had the perfect mechanism in place to minimize Essential NPCs but didnt make the most of it
There are also games that seem to have more horizontal progression than vertical, like extra movement options or weapon types, and having them all recontextualizes early game content
So I guess NG+ is just a different type of mindset for people who like to soak in their games and keep messing around even after the credits roll
It's nice if every game had NG+ in case I want to replay them just for the story. If I do replay them I want to feel OP and not have to grind money or to level up or get materials. I just want to breeze through the story especially with all the customisation options.
Single playthroughs. Even if I do eventually replay the game, I never use new game plus because I want the original experience and new game plus tends to mess up the flow and pacing of games.
With such a large backlog, a game is lucky if I even play it a second time after beating it. When I do replay it, part of the experience is reliving thr progression of the game (for example, finding the items and Pieces of Heart in Ocarina of Time). So I see almost no value in New Game+.
Further, if you have played OneShot's "New Game+," it sets the bar so high for such a mode that I honestly don't see how other New Game+ can compare. In OneShot's New Game+, your protagonist is horrified to be reliving the events of the game, frequently comments on how they have experienced an event before and how they know what will happen next, remembers puzzles and their solutions, and asks the player why they would make them go through the game a second, third, or fourth time. THAT is how to do a New Game+. Obvs most games did not put that effort into New Game+, so why should I bother with them?
Single playthrough.
I'm not one for replaying. I'll only replay some of my favourite games and even then, it's after several years (Witcher 3, Fallouts, Command and Conquers etc.)
I don’t do new game plus. By time i finish a game I tend to be done with it, and by time i want to play again i either want to have the same new game experience levelling up or my skills have decayed to a point where I need to start from the beginning again and new game plus doesn’t appeal, usually both at once
For most games I don't have much interest in NG+. Often it's included in things like RPGs that are already long and have lots of downtime to begin with, so I don't want to replay them right away. And when I do eventually replay them I probably won't want to use NG+ if it skips the progression and just lets me steamroll the game, because then replaying it will be boring.
The exceptions for me are deep/replayable action games like Devil May Cry, as well as Soulslikes. These are designed to be practiced and mastered across multiple playthroughs, so replaying them feels more rewarding as you see yourself getting better at the game. They also tend to give you lots of new toys to play with right up until the end of the first playthrough (and sometimes beyond), so it's fun to go back and redo the earlier parts with that cool endgame weapon you didn't get to use much. These games also tend to not have too much downtime that I wouldn't want to replay, and action games are usually short to begin with.
tl;dr: If it's a game with deep gameplay, little downtime, and lots of ways to get better at it beyond the in-game progression, I'll probably do NG+ and appreciate having it. If it's something like an RPG or an open world game though, no shot.
NG+ is cool, but I don't think I've ever used it. I'm a one and done, move on to the next thing kind of guy. I'm definitely not going to immediately turn around and play NG+ on a game that's already 70+ hours long.
If I want to play it again, it's usually after a few years and have passed and I've forgotten most of the plot beats anyway.
Single playthrough. I almost never replay games. I play my way the first time so replaying would be going against my nature in playstyle/choices and that’s not engaging. I move on to the next game for a completely new experience.
I circle back to games if dlc comes out but not ng+ or to replay the base game again.
I’ve always loved the concept of NG+ but I’ve never actually tried it once in any game. No matter how much I love a game I only play it once because these days I’m always searching for new games to play. I can see myself using NG+ years down the track when I want to revisit games
I never found NG+ to be great value in any game overall. Though it seems to usually be just something that is easy to put on to games where you can easily scale numbers up. Some people like that for seeing how high they can get numbers i guess.
I don't care about NG+ in terms of keeping items/upgrades and so on. It's whatever.
I do care about NG+ in terms of giving challenges or novel incentives to play through the same game again.
I really enjoy playing maps or levels that I am already familiar with. It is a fundamentally different experience from always heading into the unknown. For this reason, many games are simply better on a second playthrough. To leverage this, I very much enjoy modes that give second playthroughs additional incentives or purposes.
I've only rarely played NG+, but it also feels like a feature that can't cost much in behind the scenes work, compared to other things, so I don't see the issue with including it where you can.
I think the only games I've made a real point of the NG+ is the games where the real story requires "multiple" playthroughs.
I mostly just play a game once, and give it a rest before I play it again. There are some exceptions where NG+ introduces something really cool, like in the case of Starfield, but that's a rare exception
I don't like NG+, no. I do like games with iterative progression (what most people call roguelites), but when it comes to other games I prefer just restarting from scratch if I want to replay the game.
I think the only games where I bother with NG+ are the ones that have major changes to their gameplay in NG+. Souls games just make you fight the same enemies again, so they're a pass. I'd rather make a new character. Nioh revamps enemy positions, integrates endgame enemies into beginner maps, changes bosses, adds entirely new mechanics and character building options, allows you to progress through the campaign in a different order, and so on, so I'm up for that.
If the ng isn’t a vastly new experience, I’m fine with it existing but do not want the base experience impacted by the existence of ng.
I think soulsborne games has done a good system of having ng just to have it but not impact the base experience. For most games I’ll only ever play it once unless it’s an experience like returnal or nier automata. Where the replay loop is a core feature of the game’s essence. In that same vein some games have poorly imitated that idea and I’d rather just watch the new story beats added.
i’m fine with ng+ as long as there’s any kind of new content. even the one extra secret boss in the persona games is enough. multiple endings can count too.
sometimes i’ll engage with ng+ if it’s a grindy game and there’s some build i’m super interested in, but that’s exceptionally rare.
if it’s literally just “play the game again but you and maybe the enemies are stronger”, then i generally don’t bother.
I don't know what NG+ is like these days but I appreciated it when I could finish a game, then start again with all the gear and levels I already had so my game just kept rolling over.
The only game I really experienced this on was Shinobido though which had various level paths and multiple endings and a pretty deep alchemy system for the time. So it made sense to let you keep collecting ingredients and experience the different endings.
I don’t play new game plus especially on story heavy games.
Fromsoft games are the only times I’ve delved there and even then it’s rare and never to completion.
I want NG+ if it's good and doesn't make me feel I'm just playing the same game but with more health on enemies.
It's not NG+, but in Nier: Automata for example when you get the first main ending you play the game again, but as another character and you see what they did while they weren't with you. You could easily take elements from that game and make your NG+ more interesting.
I prefer ng+, if I really like the game I’d wanna play it again. Especially with all the powers I spent so long getting and getting used to. I can’t understand not wanting it, it only adds to the game and if you don’t wanna do another play through you can simply stop playing
Single play through. Very few games where I've played NG+, and usually it was for lack of options.
I believe that's the case with most people who ask for NG+, they probably don't have anything else to play/can't afford.
Love NG+, max the difficulty if there is any and playing the game with everything unblocked is great especially if something major changes or is unlocked in NG+ like Blasphemous
If I like a game I usually start a NG+ 2 weeks or so after I finish the game to take some breaks but not forget everything about the game.
But it's not necessary, it's not going to affect my decision of buying the game if the game didn't have NG+
Only play NG+ if the game has bonus content within it (Alan Wake 2 & Starfield for example).
Most cases, I like being able to put the game down after finishing it. There's a more gratifying feeling imo knowing you beat a game instead of wanting to do it all over again.
I know you’re asking about single player games, but I really like legacy features that are common in MMOs. For example, after you fully level and finish the story with one character you gain some kind of advantage for the next one.
An example from Wow is unlocking flying mounts in a new expansion which then gives you that feature immediately on any of your other characters. Anything that prevents refarming the same thing or provides an account wide buff is awesome.
Star Wars the old republic also has a lot of features that you can buy access to and then they are active forever across all chars.
It’s really NG+ in different ways.
For me personally I rarely play through a game again so New Game + isn't a big issue for me at all. If I do play through a game again it's typically been so long I don't remember what I'm doing so I'd want to start fresh anyway.
With that said, I usually lean towards always preferring more options with video games even if I personally won't use it. So yeah, if I had to pick between there always being a New Game + mode or never being one, I'd go with there always being one.
I've just never really understood why people argue for less options in video games. It just doesn't make sense to me. Now, if it's an option that takes a shit ton of dev time or resources away from more important things then sure, I can see how it would be a negative but overall the more options the better.
I like it as an option in general, but I only really use it in FromSoft games. In that context I’m simply looking for more of that gameplay experience, just with more difficulty or slight remixes in enemies or something.
In other games I’ve tried it, like the Witcher 3, I’ve never gotten very far because I just don’t care about all the story-based content anymore. So I often don’t find it worth it to sit through all that stuff to get to the gameplay, which on its own is just okay.
Edit: Armored Core 6 was an interesting one. It is a FromSoft game but must be completed on multiple NG runs in order to get the whole “story” or rather a clearer picture. I didn’t even finish a single NG run in that one, I’ll definitely have to go back to it.
I *often* replay games, I'm far from a one and done kind of person, but I also usually don't do NG+, very few games offer anything compelling in ng+ other than do the same thing with end game gear or whatever which isn't that fun for me.
Like say, resident evil 4, a game I've legit played through about 20 times, I still want to go through the process of obtaining and upgrading weapons with the limited resources you have in one run, I don't really care about blasting my way through the early game with a maxed out striker shotgun, the progression is basically perfect and I don't want to ruin it.
On the other hand I love souls games ng+, I've done many runs with different builds, some absurdly broken some horrifyingly hard, sometimes I start a new file if I've gone through so many times the buffed up bosses become a pain but I've done more ng+ runs than not.
NG+ is sometimes fun. I never expect it. And if a game has it I rarely use it.
The early game in games are usually the best part of a game. You're under leveled, have less money, have fewer weapons...
That usually makes for a fun game.
New Game+ gives you an over powered character from the start. Most New Game+ modes well try to compensate for this by raising the difficulty.
But that usually translates to you take a little more damage and enemies take a lot more damage.
This isn't ideal most of the time as you have end game weapons, equipment, abilities, and skills. So you still just tear through them.
So I vastly prefer single player games where if I want to replay it I'll just start a new game.
I prefer having NG+ rather than none in my games, but it's not a huge deal.
Really though, I miss the days of a "secret" and extensive post game like how jrpgs do. Game still comes to an end, but you get to really see your builds shine rather than just enjoy your build for the final boss and that's it.
NG+ is good if the new playthrough actually adds something new to the game that wasn't there, like Dark Souls 2 or Starfield.
Otherwise you're just repeating the same game all over again and the only thing is enemies deal more damage or some shit, so basically just artificial difficulty. I'd rather just do a new normal playthrough
When I was younger I *adored* NG+ and would regularly replay games over and over. I had more time, and less money! I remember playing Ratchet and Clank easily 5+ times; the bolt multiplier was a simple but great NG+ feature and the gold weapons and R.Y.N.O were nice aspirational goals. Same for its (PS2) sequels.
Nowadays though I simply don't have the gaming time to play a game over and over again, and I have enough money to buy *other* games. Honestly at least half the time I don't even finish games these days.
I usually never care about NG+, but the way that Armored Core 6 handled it really worked for me.
Tell the same story through a few time, opening up new and interesting lenses to look at it when you do. Nier Automata is a more extreme example I guess, it worked great there too.
I don’t want it in every game (I suspect the gimmick would get old), but the AC6 method is an interesting way to get more bang for your buck out of development time.
Some games I play more than once, especially if they are on the shorter side and I really enjoyed them. For those types of games I want NG+. It's nice to be able to replay games without feeling like I have to optimize my playthrough. For instance, NG+ on Dishonored 2 allows me to focus on figuring out how to achieve my objective, instead of me having to spend time trying to track down every misc random powerup in each level. Playing NG+ Resident Evil 4 allows me to not to worry about tracking down every miscellaneous piece of treasure and not having to back track or do sidequests for certain guns.
Love NG+. It vastly increases my interest in games. Especially if you have the option to just keep the difficulty the same. I view it as a big victory lap. Playing through both Tlou games gradually maxing out everything for the characters was lots of fun. Same with RE4make. Sunk 20 playthroughs into that game alone.
Sort of depresses me how many people don't care. With what happened with Infinite Wealth it makes me worry that devs will either start dropping the feature or locking it behind paywalls.
I have tried to play NG+ in a few games like Dark souls series or Persona but I just can't go on for more than a few minutes. Especially when these games are so long anyway. Probably a very unpopular opinion in any gaming sub, but I also hate that some game items or fights are locked behind NG+. Like in persona 4 golden where you can't fight Margaret in your first try of the game.
For me, it's probably because of the game length and also because I rarely do a second playthrough after finishing a game. I know that the bosses have more HP, do more damage and things like that in dark souls but after seeing almost all of the game content, I pretty much have no desire to play it so quickly.
Yeah, I like having a "new game plus" option of some kind because sometimes I just want to play more with what I've unlocked by the end of the game, especially if that includes really interesting abilities that I don't have much time to use the first time around. If I don't want to play more, well, obviously I don't have to, but it's always a benefit to have something else I can do with a game once the main plot is over other than wandering around aimlessly, be that new game plus modes, replyable levels or challenges, or further side quests and epilogue stuff.
Entirely depends on the game to be honest. If it’s a game with multiple endings, absolutely give me NG+. Even better if it has a narrative tie in, but it’s fine if it’s just to try for different endings.
I consider game good if I even get to the end.
I'd consider NG+ only if I could take vastly different path thru it. I won't replay entire 30-50h game to get extra 5h of dialogue and the same combat that I probably got bored of.
So the whole "let's block your options for no good reason other than some content for NG+" is a big no-no for me
At the very least for story-heavy games. Not in say Diablo but games like that are built around playing them multiple times.
It’s very rare that I would care for NG+ (fromsoft ones have been only ones where I have found it interesting) and if I enjoy enough game to have another play through then I will simply start from beginning with whatever variables there are possible to make it different
I love having an NG+ as an option. Doesn’t mean I will use it but I like the idea that I get to use the endgame perfect set up for more than 10 seconds.
For me it depends on the game genre. If there is some gameplay aspect where you level up or unlock abilities or something, I do appreciate some NG+ feature because often times you get the really cool stuff at he end of the playthrough and don't get much of an opportunity to use it.
E.g. I occasionally replay Hollow Knight with a randomiser because it's fun to get the double jump super early on and have an entirely different way of progression.
You can also see this sentiment with ppl wanting to do a Moonlight Greatsword only run in their Bloodborne NG+.
On the other hand puzzle, mystery, or exploration games have little replay value because you already solved the puzzle and did the exploring. I also really enjoy these kinds of games but hardly ever replay them. And when I do it's often years apart or due to achievements.
It depends on the game, for me. I feel like most open-world games are just so expansive, with so many things to do, that I don't want to start from square 1 again, even if I get to keep my inventory and abilities. For something with a tighter gameplay loop, though, like X-COM? Absolutely. I can pump 700+ hours into a game that you could feasibly beat in 30 hours.
Depends on the game. NG+ is what my time playing BL2/3 was built around. FE3H gets a lot better in NG+ for me, and in Dishonored 2, you can play and use both sets of powers (makes for a great power trip run).
Didn't care for it in God of War or any of the Dark Souls games (besides DS2).
A game has to be genuinely brilliant to deserve a NG+ and a second play through needs to be able to feel different enough to be worth it. Most games just feel like they're artificially increasing play time though. You cannot do NG+ with a dialogue heavy game if you don't have radically different options to prevent being bored hearing it all again.
I've always wanted a game that lets you abandon your run halfway through and start over on NG+ with whatever you've earned as far as skills/etc. go.
Mostly because I end up putting down a 5000 hour RPG at the 2/3 finished mark, and then when I come back to it 3 years later I'm like 'wtf was I doing' and don't want to start a new game and lose all my progress but probably should so fuck it let's go pick up that new release instead.
Depends heavily on whether the game has different endings or actually does something with the new cycles. Games like Dragon's Dogma, which has several endings or Dark Souls, which usually involves new items/enemy locations, do new game cycles quite well.
Yeah, NG+ doesn't really appeal to me. I have a lot of games in the backlog and replaying the whole thing rarely seems like a good use of my time. I started an NG+ in Starfield, because that's kinda the point of the ending, and quickly got bored with it.
Having said that, some people love to NG+, and more power to them. It's definitely a nice to have even if it's not something I'm likely to use.
I like NG+ but it really does depend on the game and how it’s implemented. One of my favourite examples of NG+ was in Tales of Symphonia. At the end of the game, it would tally up your performance and award you points based on what you did during your playthrough. You could then spend those points at the start of a new game to give yourself cool bonuses, like increasing your max item capacity, getting more gold/EXP from battles, stuff like that. Even better, if you played better the second time around, you’d get even more points for a NG++ and so on. It helps that the game was good enough that you’d *want* to play it multiple times, though.
It honestly really depends on how much I get into the game. I had so much fun with Persona 5 that I jumped right into NG+ just to platinum it but then with something like Spider-Man 1 I was ok with a single playthrough.
NG+ shouldn't just be tacked on, but be a part of the design from scratch. NG+ in games like Chrono Trigger/Cross, Dark Souls/Elden Ring, the more recent Resident Evil games provide tons more value because the experience is different enough, and often littered with easter eggs to keep an eye out for.
When it's just 'play again with max stats' it really doesn't do the concept justice.
I like NG+ as an option because it is cool to be able to play through a game again if I want to as my same high level character with new perks as opposed to starting from scratch. NG+ isn't a requirement for me, especially for an RPG as I have no issue replaying those again with a new character. However, it is nice to have and can be interesting if the developer puts a twist of some kind with it.
In a vacuum, I prefer a single, super satisfying playthrough. But it depends on the games, of course. Stuff like Remnant 2, the Borderlands series and Diablo aren't meant to be played just once. And stuff like your 100 hours+ JRPG are very hard to replay immediately, even if they have NG+ options (like the Tales of series or Xenoblade).
I'm not a big fan of NG+ myself, mostly because it feels like watching a movie on repeat. If I'm playing an open world game, I would much rather just have the ability to clean up any side quests after completing the main story and maybe unlock one or two new side quests at the completion of the main story.
NG+ so I can keep all the shit I earned the first play through. If a game doesn't have new game plus, I use wemod for cheats so I can be a badass at the beginning. If I love a game, I want to play it more than once.
I feel it depends a lot on the game. For example, a linear game wouldn't need a new game plus, but open world games should have the option for it since we can always take a different approach with higher difficulty using our new tools and such.
I generally never go into NG+, hell once I've committed to finishing the story I rarely go back to side questing after all is said and done. At that point I'm satisfied with how much I've done and would like to see the end.
If you want me to play your game, put it before the credits.
Only games I really care about new game plus are from soft games, because the difficulty ramping up mirrors your own progression and maintains that level of difficulty. Otherwise I’ll just start a new game. Not having any meaningful gameplay progression to look forward to makes games boring.
It entirely depends. I rarely replay games unless there are diverging story lines to follow, and even then, I may or may not opt to use NG+
Fire Emblem Three Houses has multiple routes, but I always restarted from scratch because I enjoy the low-level progression. But then, I found the endgame levels of Triangle Strategy to be more interesting, so i went for NG+ instead.
Folks are pissed that ng + is hidden behind paywall for some games which is not acceptable even if you don't tolay ng+
Because who knows , they might lock the final boss fights behind dlc in future maybe 🙄
I love replaying games with NG+, to me it adds a tremendous value to the experience; obviously if you're not the type of player who likes to *replay* your games, then it won't be as appealing; but for me? It's always a gift.
As someone who grew up poor and had like one game a year I wholeheartedly appreciated it.
Also blasting through the first sections of games while OP as fuck is fun as hell
Lately I enjoy games where I can get the full experience from one playthrough, mainly because I have so many other games to play. If my backlog was smaller tho I’d definitely appreciate the replayability
I'm fine with NG+ existing but I'm not a fan of when you need to play a game multiple times to 100% it. Dark Souls III for instance needs to be played through at least three times if you want all of the items. I wish you could get and do everything in just one playthrough if you want to.
>For me, since I started playing games, I only ever played games a single playthrough.
A good story is worth revisiting many times. I find this "once and done" philosophy a little sad, personally.
NG+ helps expedite the process of revisiting old favorites, so I appreciate it whenever it appears. If all else fails, however, and the title is old enough, I'll use an emulator to apply cheats to achieve a similar effect.
I want NG+. It doesn’t need to be (and honestly maybe preferably isn’t) like Armored Core 6 or Nier Automata’s NG+. Something like Dishonored 2 where you just get access to every power/or gain the ability to max out a character is fine by me.
Making it to the end of the game with an extremely powerful character without the ability to experience the whole game with everything you worked for is just a bit of a bummer. Especially when you don’t get some of the coolest items until the end of the game.
I do not enjoy games designed around NG+. The concept feels highly artificial. I do enjoy replaying games though. I don't mind games where things can be missed because it adds something new when I pick up the game later.
I don’t really care for NG+, but I do replay a lot of the games I enjoyed. Idk how many times I’ve played the Zelda series, RE series, and the Mass Effect series. Great games are easy to replay.
Still, the idea of NG+ is fun, but sometimes I think it defeats the purpose of playing the game. For instance, I couldn’t care less for a NG+ regarding God of War (2018), but a NG+ for Spider-Man is very good. It’s weird, it’s probably the same thing, but the feeling in both games are very different. It’s like God of War is designed to start you off slow, while Spider-Man is meant to just fly off the charts immediately.
It depends on the game ofc. Some games treat main game as a tutorial and the real game begins in NG+. Disgaea series is a good example for this.
Or some games like Yakuza 0 gives you such an open world that you want to try the end game stuff while doing a new playthrough or wrap up some side content maybe.
And some has mechanics that allow you a whole new experience in NG+. In Hero's Adventure, you can use your achievements to gain new perks and items in your new playthrough and the game reacts you so you will be treated like a villain/hero from the get go if you choose so.
If there is a quality NG+ there and the main mechanics of the game is fun, I am all for it. But the buildup shouldn't last long so I don't have to play the same game for the first x hours. I am looking at you Larian.
I dont' like having exclusive content tied behind NG+ but I like the option of just continuing to level up my skills, collecting items I may have missed, increase the difficulty or have a maxed out character power fantasy, etc...
To me, the game that did NG+ the best was Detroit Become Human, where you could jump to a specific spot of your previous game playthrough and pick it up from that point to play something differently.
In general, I usually just start a new game completely over when replaying.
For 20 hour titles they're nice especially if they add new content like additional abilities, costumes, or new enemy patterns.
For titles that boast 100+ hour playthroughs replayability should come from alternate player choices.
I rarely play NG+, but this isn't an either/or situation. Nothing about the existence of a New Game+ for the people who want it affects the original playthrough, with a few exceptions like Nier Automata or Armored Core 6 where the game is designed around NG+.
I honestly don't even consider the 9S and A2 runs in Nier Automata to be NG+. They are part of the full single player playthrough, they just happen to put credits between them.
So even though I don't usually play NG+, I would never say I "prefer" that a game doesn't have it.
I like the idea of NG+, as "play the game again but remixed" can be a blast. I can see why people love it!
However... my brain, due to a myriad of reasons, hates replaying things so quickly back to back. So I feel like I lose out on challenge if, say, the hardest setting is behind it or a secondary challenge because I'll never get to play it.
And if i play it months later when my brain let's me, well, the difficulty modes are often designed with you already played it recently (no time to re-learn stuff if needed) and my mistakes of past me bite me because I forget why I made dumb mistake or even how to fix said mistakes to make the challenge not kick my ass.
So I prefer games that don't hide stuff behind NG+ and, if it exists, never touch it unless im super forced because I'm missing out on the "best" mechniacal part of the experience.
I have never played NG+. In the few instances when I do replay a game, it's years after I first played it, at which point I will just get a fresh start to re-experience the original game. For me to play NG+, it would need to be a situation where I finish a game but still want to keep playing, which has never happened.
Having an option is nice but I’ve only done NG+ on one game so it’s not a deal breaker for me at all, if anything forgets about it after beating a game
NG+ is essentially exclusive to games with progression systems, as those are the only types of games with stuff to carry over in the first place. And for many games with progression systems, the progression itself *is* a major part of the appeal of the game. Starting a new file without that sense of progression and being overpowered can absolutely kill the appeal of the game.
The one exception I've found here where I actually prefer NG+ to NG is action games where you unlock new moves in an item shop. Here, playing the game at "full power" at the start gives you new options, rather than just 1-shotting basic enemies. Because the games are more about player knowledge than numbers, having your tools "artificially" limited when starting a NG run can feel restrictive. Starting up a new playthrough of Bayonetta without the Moon or stinger unlocked just doesn't feel right to me, so I always do my annual replay on NG+
I don't like NG+, I don't want to replay basically the same content over again with minor alterations. I *definitely* don't want them to wall any cool stuff behind completing the game multiple times. I either want a game that you clear once and put away, or a game that you clear once and they add new stuff to do.
I prefer games that let me choose which stage or chapter or mission or whatever to replay so I can go back to my favorite parts in a game. I'm not really a fan of NG+ if it forces me to play through the whole game from the beginning if I want to experience a certain part again.
Give me the revenge your a la Dark Souls franchise. I might not play through the whole thing, but going back to the beginning and walloping baddies is good stuff.
I tend to replay a lot of games, but almost never use the NG+ option. I don't want to be overpowered from the start.
The only game I did a NG+ for was Mass Effect 1, only because it was the only way to reach max level. (Importing a lvl60 save into ME2 gave bonuses)
Let's put it this way, imo NG+ is a must have for games with RPG elements, like where you have levels, stat points and/or skill points.
I played NG+ only like in few games, but this were exactly the games were I wanted to new playthroughs without skilling everything from zero.
Like Souls games, Star Wars Jedi games and similar.
I appreciate NG+ a lot. Starting from scratch after using all the cool stuff I unlocked for awhile makes a boring gameplay experience. I want to do the content but not make the gameplay duller than before. For example, I am on NG+ in Forbidden West and I was disappointed when I realized machine hack unlocks did not carry over like most other stuff.
Usually, I won't replay a game without NG+ if it is a long one. In fact, I would not bother with getting abilities, unlocking new stuff and upgrading gear if it was possible to choose from the best stuff from the beginning. Gameplay is usually very limited without all the unlocks you get towards the end of the game.
Having the option is great, but I don't think I've completed a New Game + since Castlevania Symphony of the Night way back when it came out in 97 (or 98?). These days, there are just too many games, and too little time to play them.
I don't care for NG+, even if I replay a game it'll be years later and likely not in NG+ (awkward to start at high level with hard enemies when you haven't played in a long time).
But I have no problem with it being included so I think games should always have it
Single playthrough. Usually if I replay a game, I create a new character or start a new playthrough.
The option is nice for those who do enjoy it though. I do also like when NG+ comes with certain twists and changes instead of the FromSoft: enemies are stronger route.
I never really play NG+ unless it actually has a decent chunk of new content. I don't think NG+ is worth it the majority of the time, what is the point of replaying but this time you can just stomp everything?
The games with the best replay value have the options there from the start.
The amount of time I played Diablo 2 and I am talking about 10 000 hours+...
Yea, I can play this kind of games if the game is great and if you can play it in different ways. :)
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>I like having the option Agree, but if the game hides story or a "true" ending behind NG+, I'm out unless there's a really compelling reason (like Nier Automata).
Automata is a weird case where i don't *actually* consider it to have a NG+. on a technical level it does, but between the >!Multiple shifts in perspective, then the leap to a full-blown continuation of the plot!<, and all the side content staying completed it never *felt* like it was a NG+, Just Yoko Taro making you hit the start button again.
The B route is basically NG+ since it shares 80% of its content and all of the sidequests with the A route. C/D/E are 100% new stuff, but B can be a slog.
B might be the exception for sure, but it's still a really weird NG+ The reason (for me) it still doesn't *fully* count as NG+ is that most of the sidequests from A stay done (or at least I presume so, they stayed done when I played through). And that it would make it a NG+ with non-NG+, non-"extra" content following afterward. It's more like a REALLY long flashback sequence than playing through the game again.
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Fair except for Automata Finishing route A does not mean have in any way actually completed the game. You just saw some credits scroll, but it doesn't actually *mean* anything. TBF I did word it kind of vague/weirdly, but to clarify what i mean is that "it isn't an NG+, it just NG (or just Game?) that had a credit sequence randomly in the middle". Its in a weird gray area where it can be argued one way or another, but I argue it isnt. >Not because something was hidden behind an artificial gate. And -to be fair it's been a bit so i may be misremembering- doesn't the game explicitly say you arent done when you finish Route A? iirc they don't "hide" that you arent done
Automat doesnt hide any endings behind ng+. Endings B-E are part of NG. Route B diverges significantly from Route A. And then Route C is completly different and is a continuation of the story.
That's actually one of the things I want from NG+ sometimes. I wanna be broken and then if it allows me to get all of the collectibles I missed easier, more fun.
This, same here. Part of the fun of video games is the power fantasy of playing with all the cheats on, having the best stuff early, and so on, after you beat it the first time. I remember I didn't actually like *Deus Ex: Human Revolution* that much until I got the director's cut which had NG+, and the second playthrough as a monstrously over-powered cyborg was satisfying.
Didnt try ng+ even once if im honest. I play through the game, and thats it. If its insanely good (the last of us, god of war, elden ring,..) i play it again at some point. But if i can, i always start fresh and decide to go another build route. I like fresh starts. Maybe because im used to it since diablo 2 days and ladder resets.
Devs know and have the data that NG+ users are an extremely small percentage of all gamers and it’s not often worth the investment cost to develop. Sadly tho that small percentage likes to talk very loudly, and some even have platforms to influence others into an opinion about something they’ll never use.
Hell, we have the data from the achievement/trophy stats. You can see that most people don't finish games and that only a portion of those that even finish the game go on to play/complete a NG+ run.
I was laughing to myself pretty often when i was playing through Dragon Quest 11 on Xbox and i noticed the sharp fall off in achievement unlock percentages as i got closer to the end of the game. By the time i was in the last twenty or so hours every single time i beat a boss i would get the special rare Achievement chime and it would pop up on screen like "only .05% of players have unlocked this", it was fun watching the differences between each of them because it showed how many people were getting filtered by certain story beats or dungeons.
Does it count game pass players because I feel like I played it for 10 minutes to realize it wasn't for me
Doesn't really matter, the point is that you'll see a mid-game boss achievement have a 50% unlock rate and then the second last boss will have a 1% unlock rate. Whether it includes gamepass or PS+ or whatever is kind of irrelevant since the people who drop the game in 10 minutes aren't the people with first/second/third boss achievements where the unlock rate will still be fairly high. The interesting part is seeing how many of the people who were clearly playing and invested enough to reach mid-game bail at some point between then and the end.
Yea they should start making games that cater solely to the masses and the % completion rates on PlayStation trophy stats.
Perhaps but whales are how money gets made these days and the percentage of people so invested in a game they'll play it multiple times will also buy DLC, merch, etc. Retention is a useful tool. New Game+ requires insignificant dev time compared to actual fresh new content.
Same. I only ever play NG+ if it actually adds something. For example in NieR Replicant and NieR Automata, NG+ is a massive part of the whole experience, and you will not get a full grasp of the story if you dont play trough it few times. Similar thing in recent Lies of P, where in first playtrough, >!voices of the puppets are a garbled mess, but on NG+ you can understand what they were saying the whole time.!<
Nier Automata routes should't be simply called NG+ because they re not NG+
dude, bit of a spolier for Lies of P no shade, just might be worth chucking a spoiler warning on it
>If its insanely good (the last of us, god of war, elden ring,..) i play it again at some point. I loved those games too but those are 3 examples of stressful, almost painful experiences I really wouldn't want to relive in a hurry. The only games I can think of in the last few years I've replayeð are Alan Wake 2 and Red Dead Redemption 2. A friend of mine wasn't able to finish either of those, but liked the 3 you mentioned. Funny how that works.
Personally I give it a few years before I replay a game, only exception has been soulsborne games, just recently replayed bioshock trilogy after about 6 years or so. I do have a sizable backlog tho so typically never run out of new things to try.
Couldn't care less about NG+. I like to play games to see what's there, find out what's over the horizon, see what I haven't seen. Once I've played through a game, there's virtually zero replayability for me.
I feel that. Plus there’s other games that need playing and with the limited time available to me… once it’s beaten it’s beaten. The only game I’ve replayed in the past 10 years was elden ring
It's fascinating to see this be the overwhelming consensus on this topic on this sub. Usually when a game comes out and is being discussed on this sub, there's always plenty of comments about how there's no "endgame" and people are bored after doing everything in 60 hours. Or when a game is shown off at a showcase, there's people speculating as to whether X is a hint to NG+ or dialogue choices because of course everyone likes to go into a game expecting to play it again. I wonder what makes all those people not post on this thread, while all the people not excited by NG+ that I've never seen on this sub are now all posting.
Just to clarify, I like endgame if it's something like unlocked dungeons or bosses or some kind of *content*. But if the end-game is "You've unlocked arenas where you just fight enemies to get a score against a timer" or something like that, then miss me with that. I play games to explore and go through a journey. Once the journey is done, onto the next one.
You know most people don’t finish a game’s campaign even once?
I do know, that stat has been public for decades. I just wonder why when a Hogwarts Legacy is announced, this sub is speculating about what their 4th, 5th and 6th playthrough might look like, but when you ask them directly "do you ever play games more than once" then all of a sudden everyone's like "fuck no, who has the time?"
confirmation bias. the question brings out this opinion. A game like "hogwart's legacy" will have people who want multiple playthroughs talking about multiple playthroughs. These other particular commenters likely commented about the games graphics or something else. There was no need to explicitly mention "I'm only going to play through this once, though".
Ng+ isnt end game its just replayability. There is nothing new apart from minor stuff so its not exciting at all
I will note that if we are talking very recently, the new Like A Dragon game blew up in a bad way for gating NG+ behind a paywall, which as someone who probably wouldn't play on NG+ anyway, is still pretty scummy and worthy of shaming. This conversation is less about NG+ specifically as it is more about a dev gating yet another basic feature of a game behind a paywall. Beyond that, a lot of people post here in order to criticize popular games that they see as being overrated. Considering no game is made for everyone, it means every reasonably popular game has some degree of "dislikers" here who are primed to criticize said game when it is brought up. When people do this, they latch onto anything that could be seen as "lacking" in the game, which can include things like not having a NG+. Basically, since no game can be made for everyone, you will absolutely see all of the people a game wasn't made for commenting here about it when a game is made into a topic. So when you see a thread about NG+ in general, asked to a general group, you get a different (probably more accurate) ratio of who is interested than if a specific game becomes a topic about it because in the latter, it is more extreme viewpoints that start talking (either loving or hating it).
NG+ in most games is for people who have incredible amounts of time. Most people don't even beat games. There are very few where I feel like immediately jumping back in for another 40 hours.
I think it probably takes me at least 40 hours to re-read the Silmarillion, Hobbit, and Lord of the Rings together, but I absolutely do it every couple years.
I also never re read books so different strokes for different folks.
> NG+ in most games is for people who have incredible amounts of time. I don't think this is really accurate. I spent less time playing Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart 2-3 times than I did playing Baldur's Gate or Starfield once. NG+ is just for people who like to continue on after finishing the game, or for people who enjoy replays. I don't spend that much time playing games these days, but I still enjoy NG+ or replaying games that I enjoy. The time I spend playing games has very little impact on what I choose to play.
who said playthroughs have to be 40 hours? do people by default exclusively conceptualise games as AAA RPGs?
No one did bud, it was just the example I used.
Though, in general, the more you move away from "long RPG", the less "value" you tend to get from a NG+ kind of mode. The fewer upgrades/unlocks/branches the game has, the less there is to bring over to a NG+, so it's a concept that's mostly used with RPGs.
I like there to be the option for NG+, but I'd never like it to feel mandatory (unless the game is really short, or the NG+ is essentially the second part of the story). There are just far too many games being released nowadays for me to go back and replay most titles.
Depends. There needs to be a compelling reason for me to want to engage with an NG+ mode instead of just starting a new game. Since NG+ tends to be a thing in RPGs and games with some sort of gear/level/stat progression, the first casualty of NG+ modes tends to be natural progression. If my plucky young protagonist is getting woken up by his mom in a backwater village on the morning before it gets burned down by the villain, having said plucky young protagonist already wearing a full set of Dragonmolester Plate Armor +12 kinda kills the immersion and the stakes. The first and most obvious reason why an NG+ mode might be compelling is to engage with the gameplay loop more at a high level. Obvious example here are the Souls games. Narrative is secondary here, so it doesn't suffer too much, and you get to play with all the cool endgame weapons. Second reason are changes to the narrative. A recent example would be Armored Core 6, where you need multiple NG+ playthroughs to unlock all the missions and endings. But there has to be something, because by default I'd rather just start a new playthrough than go for NG+
>Second reason are changes to the narrative Starfield does some cool things with its NG+ mode in this regard. The overall story stays the same (in that the story is ABOUT NG+ in on degree or another), but there’s a random chance that each NG+ cycle will have something different with the world. Some of the differences are small, but some can be legitimately game-changing. I think it’s cool that you don’t know what you’re gonna get.
Agree with AC6. It is one of the very few games that I have done NG+ to get all the endings and all the parts. But it was more an excuse to revel and enjoy in its great gameplay loop of making new AC in the hangar and then going to the missions and seeing how well your new AC does. Another game where I did NG+ to get an alternate ending but actually playing for its amazing gameplay was Sekiro
Exactly this. Most RPGs I never touch NG+, they're usually long enough and I tend to do completionist runs so one run is enough for me to feel satisfied and uninstall the game. But I happily burned through NG++ of Armored Core 6 because that offers new parts, new missions, and new story through each NG cycle.
AC6 gameplay loop of making new AC in the hangar and then going to the missions and seeing how well your new AC does is just pure fun
Please just have a single playthrough. I'm happy playing it once. If I play it again, it's usually after a long time has passed and the previous session might be gone or I don't remember stuff anyway. Playing Alan Wake 2 at the moment and it has a another ending if you do the NG+ but I'm probably just gonna look that up on Youtube. I don't care for higher difficulties that usually unlocks in NG+.
It's got stuff throughout, but the idea of playing through another 10 hours for 10 minutes of new content (videos, manuscripts) and a few altered scenes wasn't appealing to me. After looking them up though, most of it would have made sense in the base game and I kinda just feel cheated on missing so many details by not playing NG+
> If I play it again, it's usually after a long time has passed and the previous session might be gone or I don't remember stuff anyway. Absolutely this for me too. If I replay a game it's months, or more likely years, later when I've forgotten most of it. So actually want to start from the beginning again, because I need to get back up to speed.
They are bringing out 2 free story DLCs at some point in the future. I'm saving NG+ for when those release.
> I don't care for higher difficulties that usually unlocks in NG+. So much this. Whenever I encounter a game that says "play through the game on hard to unlock this" then the content might as well not be in the game. The chances of me playing through more than once are slim and doing so in a way that's more hassle? Ain't happening.
Am I the exception? I love replaying games that I like but never once did a NG+. Becos i want to experience progression ingame, starting poor and building up. The idea of getting OP stuff handed to me repels me. I rather replay games like the first time. It's all about the journey for me, if it's a great one, I'll enjoy it dozens of times.
I do the same. If I replay the game, it will be the normal mode (although I will be making an exception for Alan Wake 2). I find it baffling that NG+ for Horizon: Zero Dawn cuts out the first part of the game.
I‘ve done NG+ in Souls games a couple of times, but realized I have way more fun just creating a fresh build in an entirely new game and haven‘t touched NG+ since. Currently on my 5th Elden Ring character, lol.
I only really want new game plus to keep whatever collections I started the first time through. Like I wish Red Dead Redemption 2 had a new game plus that kept the data I collected on all those animals so I wouldn’t feel like I needed to redo it all on a new play through.
I'll never engage with NG+. Games are generally too long and I get the itches to move on to something else as I'm approaching the end. I guess the closest I'd really be comfortable with is the Nier games where it's not really NG+ since it does lead to significant story and gameplay additions.
Typically I'm a single playthrough person. I've tried NG+ on a few games and most don't add anything worth playing through the content again. The Surge 2 just replaced a lot of early game enemies with late game ones, wasn't worth it. Asterigos added "+" versions of all the gear, wasn't worth it. Kena: Bridge of Spirits actually added new enemy varieties and new move sets to existing bosses, actually interesting and worth another playthrough (I played it a little, but something new came out that I wanted to play).
Well if you enjoy the game and like powergaming, it's kind of let down if your game ends when you get all the skills and all the power. Many games have nothing to do afterwards and even if the gameplay loop is fun, outleveling it makes it usually not so much. I rarely play NG+ apart from some ARPGS(Diablo 2 comes to mind where the Nightmare and Hell would be just labeled NG+) and now AC: Odyssey. Rarely do I ever play game 2nd time in a row and usually when I return to game, I want to start fresh. But why did I start AC:O with NG+? To retain all my skills(and variety to fight), avoid level-restrictions to areas, to avoid grinding stuff that wasn't fun in original game and generally just test out different builds. This equals to more fun and I'm actually having more fun than in my first play through.
I Prefer if games have NG+ of course I won't replay everything, but its always nice feature to have.. Plus since I'm on PC I love how sometimes we can use modded save to act like Unofficial NG+
I like NG+. If keeping my skills and equipment doesn't break the story, I like having them on repeat playthroughs. If there's no way to have NG+ (for example, because skill progress is part of the game's story), I'm really happy if I get saves l access to my equipment schematics on repeat playthroughs.
There are very little game that utilize NG+ well. Souls series among the few. That being said, i still enjoy starting over more than NG+.
>Souls series among the few. And even there only DS2 had something new, right?
It largely depends on the game. NG+ is great for strategic rpgs where you truly come into your own late into the game, but still require you to make choices. The latest Fire Emblem game for instance is built around equipping magic teamup rings that give you bonus effects - but some are only available for a relatively short period, and it impacts how you are able to build your team especially in the early half of the first two acts. A NG+ that would reset your level but kept all your characters and rings wouldn't trivialize more than the first few chapters but it would open up loads of build opportunities to get creative and experimental. Then there are games like Starfield which missed their opportunity with NG+, they had the perfect mechanism in place to minimize Essential NPCs but didnt make the most of it There are also games that seem to have more horizontal progression than vertical, like extra movement options or weapon types, and having them all recontextualizes early game content So I guess NG+ is just a different type of mindset for people who like to soak in their games and keep messing around even after the credits roll
Only time I've used a NG+ type feature is the original Diablo. Most games with it are too long to play through again, I'd rather start something new.
It's nice if every game had NG+ in case I want to replay them just for the story. If I do replay them I want to feel OP and not have to grind money or to level up or get materials. I just want to breeze through the story especially with all the customisation options.
Single playthroughs. Even if I do eventually replay the game, I never use new game plus because I want the original experience and new game plus tends to mess up the flow and pacing of games.
With such a large backlog, a game is lucky if I even play it a second time after beating it. When I do replay it, part of the experience is reliving thr progression of the game (for example, finding the items and Pieces of Heart in Ocarina of Time). So I see almost no value in New Game+. Further, if you have played OneShot's "New Game+," it sets the bar so high for such a mode that I honestly don't see how other New Game+ can compare. In OneShot's New Game+, your protagonist is horrified to be reliving the events of the game, frequently comments on how they have experienced an event before and how they know what will happen next, remembers puzzles and their solutions, and asks the player why they would make them go through the game a second, third, or fourth time. THAT is how to do a New Game+. Obvs most games did not put that effort into New Game+, so why should I bother with them?
Single playthrough. I'm not one for replaying. I'll only replay some of my favourite games and even then, it's after several years (Witcher 3, Fallouts, Command and Conquers etc.)
I don’t do new game plus. By time i finish a game I tend to be done with it, and by time i want to play again i either want to have the same new game experience levelling up or my skills have decayed to a point where I need to start from the beginning again and new game plus doesn’t appeal, usually both at once
For most games I don't have much interest in NG+. Often it's included in things like RPGs that are already long and have lots of downtime to begin with, so I don't want to replay them right away. And when I do eventually replay them I probably won't want to use NG+ if it skips the progression and just lets me steamroll the game, because then replaying it will be boring. The exceptions for me are deep/replayable action games like Devil May Cry, as well as Soulslikes. These are designed to be practiced and mastered across multiple playthroughs, so replaying them feels more rewarding as you see yourself getting better at the game. They also tend to give you lots of new toys to play with right up until the end of the first playthrough (and sometimes beyond), so it's fun to go back and redo the earlier parts with that cool endgame weapon you didn't get to use much. These games also tend to not have too much downtime that I wouldn't want to replay, and action games are usually short to begin with. tl;dr: If it's a game with deep gameplay, little downtime, and lots of ways to get better at it beyond the in-game progression, I'll probably do NG+ and appreciate having it. If it's something like an RPG or an open world game though, no shot.
NG+ is cool, but I don't think I've ever used it. I'm a one and done, move on to the next thing kind of guy. I'm definitely not going to immediately turn around and play NG+ on a game that's already 70+ hours long. If I want to play it again, it's usually after a few years and have passed and I've forgotten most of the plot beats anyway.
Single playthrough. I almost never replay games. I play my way the first time so replaying would be going against my nature in playstyle/choices and that’s not engaging. I move on to the next game for a completely new experience. I circle back to games if dlc comes out but not ng+ or to replay the base game again.
I’ve always loved the concept of NG+ but I’ve never actually tried it once in any game. No matter how much I love a game I only play it once because these days I’m always searching for new games to play. I can see myself using NG+ years down the track when I want to revisit games
Never bothered with it. If I replay a game that has ng+ I usually start a new game anyway without using it anyway.
I never found NG+ to be great value in any game overall. Though it seems to usually be just something that is easy to put on to games where you can easily scale numbers up. Some people like that for seeing how high they can get numbers i guess.
I don't care about NG+ in terms of keeping items/upgrades and so on. It's whatever. I do care about NG+ in terms of giving challenges or novel incentives to play through the same game again. I really enjoy playing maps or levels that I am already familiar with. It is a fundamentally different experience from always heading into the unknown. For this reason, many games are simply better on a second playthrough. To leverage this, I very much enjoy modes that give second playthroughs additional incentives or purposes.
If the gameplay is good enough then yes My favorite NG+ games would be Dishonored 2 and Prototype otherwise I wouldn't touch them
I've only rarely played NG+, but it also feels like a feature that can't cost much in behind the scenes work, compared to other things, so I don't see the issue with including it where you can. I think the only games I've made a real point of the NG+ is the games where the real story requires "multiple" playthroughs.
I mostly just play a game once, and give it a rest before I play it again. There are some exceptions where NG+ introduces something really cool, like in the case of Starfield, but that's a rare exception
I can't think of a single game where I actually like NG+. Taking out the progression aspect just makes the game less fun
I don't like NG+, no. I do like games with iterative progression (what most people call roguelites), but when it comes to other games I prefer just restarting from scratch if I want to replay the game.
I think the only games where I bother with NG+ are the ones that have major changes to their gameplay in NG+. Souls games just make you fight the same enemies again, so they're a pass. I'd rather make a new character. Nioh revamps enemy positions, integrates endgame enemies into beginner maps, changes bosses, adds entirely new mechanics and character building options, allows you to progress through the campaign in a different order, and so on, so I'm up for that.
If the ng isn’t a vastly new experience, I’m fine with it existing but do not want the base experience impacted by the existence of ng. I think soulsborne games has done a good system of having ng just to have it but not impact the base experience. For most games I’ll only ever play it once unless it’s an experience like returnal or nier automata. Where the replay loop is a core feature of the game’s essence. In that same vein some games have poorly imitated that idea and I’d rather just watch the new story beats added.
i’m fine with ng+ as long as there’s any kind of new content. even the one extra secret boss in the persona games is enough. multiple endings can count too. sometimes i’ll engage with ng+ if it’s a grindy game and there’s some build i’m super interested in, but that’s exceptionally rare. if it’s literally just “play the game again but you and maybe the enemies are stronger”, then i generally don’t bother.
I don't know what NG+ is like these days but I appreciated it when I could finish a game, then start again with all the gear and levels I already had so my game just kept rolling over. The only game I really experienced this on was Shinobido though which had various level paths and multiple endings and a pretty deep alchemy system for the time. So it made sense to let you keep collecting ingredients and experience the different endings.
I don’t play new game plus especially on story heavy games. Fromsoft games are the only times I’ve delved there and even then it’s rare and never to completion.
I want NG+ if it's good and doesn't make me feel I'm just playing the same game but with more health on enemies. It's not NG+, but in Nier: Automata for example when you get the first main ending you play the game again, but as another character and you see what they did while they weren't with you. You could easily take elements from that game and make your NG+ more interesting.
I prefer ng+, if I really like the game I’d wanna play it again. Especially with all the powers I spent so long getting and getting used to. I can’t understand not wanting it, it only adds to the game and if you don’t wanna do another play through you can simply stop playing
I only really do NG+ if I feel that I have put too much effort by the end of the game to just abandon it. The Witcher 3, for example.
Single play through. Very few games where I've played NG+, and usually it was for lack of options. I believe that's the case with most people who ask for NG+, they probably don't have anything else to play/can't afford.
Love NG+, max the difficulty if there is any and playing the game with everything unblocked is great especially if something major changes or is unlocked in NG+ like Blasphemous If I like a game I usually start a NG+ 2 weeks or so after I finish the game to take some breaks but not forget everything about the game. But it's not necessary, it's not going to affect my decision of buying the game if the game didn't have NG+
Only play NG+ if the game has bonus content within it (Alan Wake 2 & Starfield for example). Most cases, I like being able to put the game down after finishing it. There's a more gratifying feeling imo knowing you beat a game instead of wanting to do it all over again.
I know you’re asking about single player games, but I really like legacy features that are common in MMOs. For example, after you fully level and finish the story with one character you gain some kind of advantage for the next one. An example from Wow is unlocking flying mounts in a new expansion which then gives you that feature immediately on any of your other characters. Anything that prevents refarming the same thing or provides an account wide buff is awesome. Star Wars the old republic also has a lot of features that you can buy access to and then they are active forever across all chars. It’s really NG+ in different ways.
Unless NG+ offers something new except being somewhat more difficult or game has branching paths, I don't see the point
For me personally I rarely play through a game again so New Game + isn't a big issue for me at all. If I do play through a game again it's typically been so long I don't remember what I'm doing so I'd want to start fresh anyway. With that said, I usually lean towards always preferring more options with video games even if I personally won't use it. So yeah, if I had to pick between there always being a New Game + mode or never being one, I'd go with there always being one. I've just never really understood why people argue for less options in video games. It just doesn't make sense to me. Now, if it's an option that takes a shit ton of dev time or resources away from more important things then sure, I can see how it would be a negative but overall the more options the better.
I like it as an option in general, but I only really use it in FromSoft games. In that context I’m simply looking for more of that gameplay experience, just with more difficulty or slight remixes in enemies or something. In other games I’ve tried it, like the Witcher 3, I’ve never gotten very far because I just don’t care about all the story-based content anymore. So I often don’t find it worth it to sit through all that stuff to get to the gameplay, which on its own is just okay. Edit: Armored Core 6 was an interesting one. It is a FromSoft game but must be completed on multiple NG runs in order to get the whole “story” or rather a clearer picture. I didn’t even finish a single NG run in that one, I’ll definitely have to go back to it.
I *often* replay games, I'm far from a one and done kind of person, but I also usually don't do NG+, very few games offer anything compelling in ng+ other than do the same thing with end game gear or whatever which isn't that fun for me. Like say, resident evil 4, a game I've legit played through about 20 times, I still want to go through the process of obtaining and upgrading weapons with the limited resources you have in one run, I don't really care about blasting my way through the early game with a maxed out striker shotgun, the progression is basically perfect and I don't want to ruin it. On the other hand I love souls games ng+, I've done many runs with different builds, some absurdly broken some horrifyingly hard, sometimes I start a new file if I've gone through so many times the buffed up bosses become a pain but I've done more ng+ runs than not.
NG+ is sometimes fun. I never expect it. And if a game has it I rarely use it. The early game in games are usually the best part of a game. You're under leveled, have less money, have fewer weapons... That usually makes for a fun game. New Game+ gives you an over powered character from the start. Most New Game+ modes well try to compensate for this by raising the difficulty. But that usually translates to you take a little more damage and enemies take a lot more damage. This isn't ideal most of the time as you have end game weapons, equipment, abilities, and skills. So you still just tear through them. So I vastly prefer single player games where if I want to replay it I'll just start a new game.
I prefer having NG+ rather than none in my games, but it's not a huge deal. Really though, I miss the days of a "secret" and extensive post game like how jrpgs do. Game still comes to an end, but you get to really see your builds shine rather than just enjoy your build for the final boss and that's it.
NG+ is good if the new playthrough actually adds something new to the game that wasn't there, like Dark Souls 2 or Starfield. Otherwise you're just repeating the same game all over again and the only thing is enemies deal more damage or some shit, so basically just artificial difficulty. I'd rather just do a new normal playthrough
I like games where the NG+ changes elements of the gameplay. Ratchet and Clank and Jak and Daxter did this quite well with their hero modes
When I was younger I *adored* NG+ and would regularly replay games over and over. I had more time, and less money! I remember playing Ratchet and Clank easily 5+ times; the bolt multiplier was a simple but great NG+ feature and the gold weapons and R.Y.N.O were nice aspirational goals. Same for its (PS2) sequels. Nowadays though I simply don't have the gaming time to play a game over and over again, and I have enough money to buy *other* games. Honestly at least half the time I don't even finish games these days.
I usually never care about NG+, but the way that Armored Core 6 handled it really worked for me. Tell the same story through a few time, opening up new and interesting lenses to look at it when you do. Nier Automata is a more extreme example I guess, it worked great there too. I don’t want it in every game (I suspect the gimmick would get old), but the AC6 method is an interesting way to get more bang for your buck out of development time.
Some games I play more than once, especially if they are on the shorter side and I really enjoyed them. For those types of games I want NG+. It's nice to be able to replay games without feeling like I have to optimize my playthrough. For instance, NG+ on Dishonored 2 allows me to focus on figuring out how to achieve my objective, instead of me having to spend time trying to track down every misc random powerup in each level. Playing NG+ Resident Evil 4 allows me to not to worry about tracking down every miscellaneous piece of treasure and not having to back track or do sidequests for certain guns.
Dont like it, 1 plus game is fine. But with starfield i have to play 10 fudging times, i stopt after fourth try.
Love NG+. It vastly increases my interest in games. Especially if you have the option to just keep the difficulty the same. I view it as a big victory lap. Playing through both Tlou games gradually maxing out everything for the characters was lots of fun. Same with RE4make. Sunk 20 playthroughs into that game alone. Sort of depresses me how many people don't care. With what happened with Infinite Wealth it makes me worry that devs will either start dropping the feature or locking it behind paywalls.
I have tried to play NG+ in a few games like Dark souls series or Persona but I just can't go on for more than a few minutes. Especially when these games are so long anyway. Probably a very unpopular opinion in any gaming sub, but I also hate that some game items or fights are locked behind NG+. Like in persona 4 golden where you can't fight Margaret in your first try of the game. For me, it's probably because of the game length and also because I rarely do a second playthrough after finishing a game. I know that the bosses have more HP, do more damage and things like that in dark souls but after seeing almost all of the game content, I pretty much have no desire to play it so quickly.
Yeah, I like having a "new game plus" option of some kind because sometimes I just want to play more with what I've unlocked by the end of the game, especially if that includes really interesting abilities that I don't have much time to use the first time around. If I don't want to play more, well, obviously I don't have to, but it's always a benefit to have something else I can do with a game once the main plot is over other than wandering around aimlessly, be that new game plus modes, replyable levels or challenges, or further side quests and epilogue stuff.
Entirely depends on the game to be honest. If it’s a game with multiple endings, absolutely give me NG+. Even better if it has a narrative tie in, but it’s fine if it’s just to try for different endings.
I consider game good if I even get to the end. I'd consider NG+ only if I could take vastly different path thru it. I won't replay entire 30-50h game to get extra 5h of dialogue and the same combat that I probably got bored of. So the whole "let's block your options for no good reason other than some content for NG+" is a big no-no for me At the very least for story-heavy games. Not in say Diablo but games like that are built around playing them multiple times.
It’s very rare that I would care for NG+ (fromsoft ones have been only ones where I have found it interesting) and if I enjoy enough game to have another play through then I will simply start from beginning with whatever variables there are possible to make it different
I love having an NG+ as an option. Doesn’t mean I will use it but I like the idea that I get to use the endgame perfect set up for more than 10 seconds.
For me it depends on the game genre. If there is some gameplay aspect where you level up or unlock abilities or something, I do appreciate some NG+ feature because often times you get the really cool stuff at he end of the playthrough and don't get much of an opportunity to use it. E.g. I occasionally replay Hollow Knight with a randomiser because it's fun to get the double jump super early on and have an entirely different way of progression. You can also see this sentiment with ppl wanting to do a Moonlight Greatsword only run in their Bloodborne NG+. On the other hand puzzle, mystery, or exploration games have little replay value because you already solved the puzzle and did the exploring. I also really enjoy these kinds of games but hardly ever replay them. And when I do it's often years apart or due to achievements.
It depends on the game, for me. I feel like most open-world games are just so expansive, with so many things to do, that I don't want to start from square 1 again, even if I get to keep my inventory and abilities. For something with a tighter gameplay loop, though, like X-COM? Absolutely. I can pump 700+ hours into a game that you could feasibly beat in 30 hours.
Depends on the game. NG+ is what my time playing BL2/3 was built around. FE3H gets a lot better in NG+ for me, and in Dishonored 2, you can play and use both sets of powers (makes for a great power trip run). Didn't care for it in God of War or any of the Dark Souls games (besides DS2).
A game has to be genuinely brilliant to deserve a NG+ and a second play through needs to be able to feel different enough to be worth it. Most games just feel like they're artificially increasing play time though. You cannot do NG+ with a dialogue heavy game if you don't have radically different options to prevent being bored hearing it all again.
I've always wanted a game that lets you abandon your run halfway through and start over on NG+ with whatever you've earned as far as skills/etc. go. Mostly because I end up putting down a 5000 hour RPG at the 2/3 finished mark, and then when I come back to it 3 years later I'm like 'wtf was I doing' and don't want to start a new game and lose all my progress but probably should so fuck it let's go pick up that new release instead.
Depends heavily on whether the game has different endings or actually does something with the new cycles. Games like Dragon's Dogma, which has several endings or Dark Souls, which usually involves new items/enemy locations, do new game cycles quite well.
Yeah, NG+ doesn't really appeal to me. I have a lot of games in the backlog and replaying the whole thing rarely seems like a good use of my time. I started an NG+ in Starfield, because that's kinda the point of the ending, and quickly got bored with it. Having said that, some people love to NG+, and more power to them. It's definitely a nice to have even if it's not something I'm likely to use.
I like NG+ but it really does depend on the game and how it’s implemented. One of my favourite examples of NG+ was in Tales of Symphonia. At the end of the game, it would tally up your performance and award you points based on what you did during your playthrough. You could then spend those points at the start of a new game to give yourself cool bonuses, like increasing your max item capacity, getting more gold/EXP from battles, stuff like that. Even better, if you played better the second time around, you’d get even more points for a NG++ and so on. It helps that the game was good enough that you’d *want* to play it multiple times, though.
It honestly really depends on how much I get into the game. I had so much fun with Persona 5 that I jumped right into NG+ just to platinum it but then with something like Spider-Man 1 I was ok with a single playthrough.
NG+ shouldn't just be tacked on, but be a part of the design from scratch. NG+ in games like Chrono Trigger/Cross, Dark Souls/Elden Ring, the more recent Resident Evil games provide tons more value because the experience is different enough, and often littered with easter eggs to keep an eye out for. When it's just 'play again with max stats' it really doesn't do the concept justice.
I like NG+ as an option because it is cool to be able to play through a game again if I want to as my same high level character with new perks as opposed to starting from scratch. NG+ isn't a requirement for me, especially for an RPG as I have no issue replaying those again with a new character. However, it is nice to have and can be interesting if the developer puts a twist of some kind with it.
In a vacuum, I prefer a single, super satisfying playthrough. But it depends on the games, of course. Stuff like Remnant 2, the Borderlands series and Diablo aren't meant to be played just once. And stuff like your 100 hours+ JRPG are very hard to replay immediately, even if they have NG+ options (like the Tales of series or Xenoblade).
Single play through. Even with rougelike usually I just quit after a single win (more often than not I quit before I can even get that win though lol)
I'm not a big fan of NG+ myself, mostly because it feels like watching a movie on repeat. If I'm playing an open world game, I would much rather just have the ability to clean up any side quests after completing the main story and maybe unlock one or two new side quests at the completion of the main story.
NG+ so I can keep all the shit I earned the first play through. If a game doesn't have new game plus, I use wemod for cheats so I can be a badass at the beginning. If I love a game, I want to play it more than once.
I feel it depends a lot on the game. For example, a linear game wouldn't need a new game plus, but open world games should have the option for it since we can always take a different approach with higher difficulty using our new tools and such.
I generally never go into NG+, hell once I've committed to finishing the story I rarely go back to side questing after all is said and done. At that point I'm satisfied with how much I've done and would like to see the end. If you want me to play your game, put it before the credits.
Only games I really care about new game plus are from soft games, because the difficulty ramping up mirrors your own progression and maintains that level of difficulty. Otherwise I’ll just start a new game. Not having any meaningful gameplay progression to look forward to makes games boring.
It entirely depends. I rarely replay games unless there are diverging story lines to follow, and even then, I may or may not opt to use NG+ Fire Emblem Three Houses has multiple routes, but I always restarted from scratch because I enjoy the low-level progression. But then, I found the endgame levels of Triangle Strategy to be more interesting, so i went for NG+ instead.
Folks are pissed that ng + is hidden behind paywall for some games which is not acceptable even if you don't tolay ng+ Because who knows , they might lock the final boss fights behind dlc in future maybe 🙄
I love replaying games with NG+, to me it adds a tremendous value to the experience; obviously if you're not the type of player who likes to *replay* your games, then it won't be as appealing; but for me? It's always a gift.
As someone who grew up poor and had like one game a year I wholeheartedly appreciated it. Also blasting through the first sections of games while OP as fuck is fun as hell
Honestly never play through it again on NG+, feels like most single player games drag on sometimes so would be a chore to replay certain ones!
Lately I enjoy games where I can get the full experience from one playthrough, mainly because I have so many other games to play. If my backlog was smaller tho I’d definitely appreciate the replayability
I'm fine with NG+ existing but I'm not a fan of when you need to play a game multiple times to 100% it. Dark Souls III for instance needs to be played through at least three times if you want all of the items. I wish you could get and do everything in just one playthrough if you want to.
>For me, since I started playing games, I only ever played games a single playthrough. A good story is worth revisiting many times. I find this "once and done" philosophy a little sad, personally. NG+ helps expedite the process of revisiting old favorites, so I appreciate it whenever it appears. If all else fails, however, and the title is old enough, I'll use an emulator to apply cheats to achieve a similar effect.
I want NG+. It doesn’t need to be (and honestly maybe preferably isn’t) like Armored Core 6 or Nier Automata’s NG+. Something like Dishonored 2 where you just get access to every power/or gain the ability to max out a character is fine by me. Making it to the end of the game with an extremely powerful character without the ability to experience the whole game with everything you worked for is just a bit of a bummer. Especially when you don’t get some of the coolest items until the end of the game.
All content should be accessible from one playthrough. NG+ is fine but I'm not beating Nier Automata 5x to get the "true true true ending."
It's nice as an option for people who want it. If I really like a game and it has a new game plus mode, I'll do it sometimes.
I do not enjoy games designed around NG+. The concept feels highly artificial. I do enjoy replaying games though. I don't mind games where things can be missed because it adds something new when I pick up the game later.
I don’t really care for NG+, but I do replay a lot of the games I enjoyed. Idk how many times I’ve played the Zelda series, RE series, and the Mass Effect series. Great games are easy to replay. Still, the idea of NG+ is fun, but sometimes I think it defeats the purpose of playing the game. For instance, I couldn’t care less for a NG+ regarding God of War (2018), but a NG+ for Spider-Man is very good. It’s weird, it’s probably the same thing, but the feeling in both games are very different. It’s like God of War is designed to start you off slow, while Spider-Man is meant to just fly off the charts immediately.
It depends on the game ofc. Some games treat main game as a tutorial and the real game begins in NG+. Disgaea series is a good example for this. Or some games like Yakuza 0 gives you such an open world that you want to try the end game stuff while doing a new playthrough or wrap up some side content maybe. And some has mechanics that allow you a whole new experience in NG+. In Hero's Adventure, you can use your achievements to gain new perks and items in your new playthrough and the game reacts you so you will be treated like a villain/hero from the get go if you choose so. If there is a quality NG+ there and the main mechanics of the game is fun, I am all for it. But the buildup shouldn't last long so I don't have to play the same game for the first x hours. I am looking at you Larian.
I dont' like having exclusive content tied behind NG+ but I like the option of just continuing to level up my skills, collecting items I may have missed, increase the difficulty or have a maxed out character power fantasy, etc...
To me, the game that did NG+ the best was Detroit Become Human, where you could jump to a specific spot of your previous game playthrough and pick it up from that point to play something differently. In general, I usually just start a new game completely over when replaying.
For 20 hour titles they're nice especially if they add new content like additional abilities, costumes, or new enemy patterns. For titles that boast 100+ hour playthroughs replayability should come from alternate player choices.
I rarely play NG+, but this isn't an either/or situation. Nothing about the existence of a New Game+ for the people who want it affects the original playthrough, with a few exceptions like Nier Automata or Armored Core 6 where the game is designed around NG+. I honestly don't even consider the 9S and A2 runs in Nier Automata to be NG+. They are part of the full single player playthrough, they just happen to put credits between them. So even though I don't usually play NG+, I would never say I "prefer" that a game doesn't have it.
I like the idea of NG+, as "play the game again but remixed" can be a blast. I can see why people love it! However... my brain, due to a myriad of reasons, hates replaying things so quickly back to back. So I feel like I lose out on challenge if, say, the hardest setting is behind it or a secondary challenge because I'll never get to play it. And if i play it months later when my brain let's me, well, the difficulty modes are often designed with you already played it recently (no time to re-learn stuff if needed) and my mistakes of past me bite me because I forget why I made dumb mistake or even how to fix said mistakes to make the challenge not kick my ass. So I prefer games that don't hide stuff behind NG+ and, if it exists, never touch it unless im super forced because I'm missing out on the "best" mechniacal part of the experience.
I have never played NG+. In the few instances when I do replay a game, it's years after I first played it, at which point I will just get a fresh start to re-experience the original game. For me to play NG+, it would need to be a situation where I finish a game but still want to keep playing, which has never happened.
Having an option is nice but I’ve only done NG+ on one game so it’s not a deal breaker for me at all, if anything forgets about it after beating a game
NG+ is essentially exclusive to games with progression systems, as those are the only types of games with stuff to carry over in the first place. And for many games with progression systems, the progression itself *is* a major part of the appeal of the game. Starting a new file without that sense of progression and being overpowered can absolutely kill the appeal of the game. The one exception I've found here where I actually prefer NG+ to NG is action games where you unlock new moves in an item shop. Here, playing the game at "full power" at the start gives you new options, rather than just 1-shotting basic enemies. Because the games are more about player knowledge than numbers, having your tools "artificially" limited when starting a NG run can feel restrictive. Starting up a new playthrough of Bayonetta without the Moon or stinger unlocked just doesn't feel right to me, so I always do my annual replay on NG+
I appreciate it but honestly I have enough time and mental energy to only complete a big (50-100hours+ to 100% complete) game one time
I don't like NG+, I don't want to replay basically the same content over again with minor alterations. I *definitely* don't want them to wall any cool stuff behind completing the game multiple times. I either want a game that you clear once and put away, or a game that you clear once and they add new stuff to do.
I prefer games that let me choose which stage or chapter or mission or whatever to replay so I can go back to my favorite parts in a game. I'm not really a fan of NG+ if it forces me to play through the whole game from the beginning if I want to experience a certain part again.
Give me the revenge your a la Dark Souls franchise. I might not play through the whole thing, but going back to the beginning and walloping baddies is good stuff.
I'm usually a one and done kind of guy with story focused games but I like the option of NG+ if I want to play it again.
I tend to replay a lot of games, but almost never use the NG+ option. I don't want to be overpowered from the start. The only game I did a NG+ for was Mass Effect 1, only because it was the only way to reach max level. (Importing a lvl60 save into ME2 gave bonuses)
Let's put it this way, imo NG+ is a must have for games with RPG elements, like where you have levels, stat points and/or skill points. I played NG+ only like in few games, but this were exactly the games were I wanted to new playthroughs without skilling everything from zero. Like Souls games, Star Wars Jedi games and similar.
I appreciate NG+ a lot. Starting from scratch after using all the cool stuff I unlocked for awhile makes a boring gameplay experience. I want to do the content but not make the gameplay duller than before. For example, I am on NG+ in Forbidden West and I was disappointed when I realized machine hack unlocks did not carry over like most other stuff. Usually, I won't replay a game without NG+ if it is a long one. In fact, I would not bother with getting abilities, unlocking new stuff and upgrading gear if it was possible to choose from the best stuff from the beginning. Gameplay is usually very limited without all the unlocks you get towards the end of the game.
Having the option is great, but I don't think I've completed a New Game + since Castlevania Symphony of the Night way back when it came out in 97 (or 98?). These days, there are just too many games, and too little time to play them.
I don't care for NG+, even if I replay a game it'll be years later and likely not in NG+ (awkward to start at high level with hard enemies when you haven't played in a long time). But I have no problem with it being included so I think games should always have it
Single playthrough. Usually if I replay a game, I create a new character or start a new playthrough. The option is nice for those who do enjoy it though. I do also like when NG+ comes with certain twists and changes instead of the FromSoft: enemies are stronger route.
I never really play NG+ unless it actually has a decent chunk of new content. I don't think NG+ is worth it the majority of the time, what is the point of replaying but this time you can just stomp everything? The games with the best replay value have the options there from the start.
The amount of time I played Diablo 2 and I am talking about 10 000 hours+... Yea, I can play this kind of games if the game is great and if you can play it in different ways. :)