Do you often play New game Plus

With both Alan Wake 2 and AC Mirage getting new game plus this week, I was wondering: do you often play new game Plus for your favourite games?

Or do you like starting fresh, in the way that the experience was crafted for the player.

One of the best things devs added in the last few years. ;)

Sure wish 343 would have done it for Infinite or maybe even add it with DLC.

Depends on the title but for souls games yes 100%.

Sometimes it sure is nice, I'm thinking Dishonored 2 for example where you can start to mix and match powers you couldn't do in the main game.

But at other times... I feel the game is way more balanced and way more directed to a vanilla experience.

I can definitely agree though it's a great addition for singleplayer games to give some extra longevity.

Kinda makes me wish Returnal had a new game plus with new weapon variants and such.

Never

The first couple times I played through Gears 5 I didn't even realize it had the new game+ option. Ever since though it's really a joy playing through when after the first 20 minutes or so Jack has all the abilities and fully powered. So good!!

Almost feels like cheating!! lol :P

I usually play it on games I like, so I'm happy when it's there. Even if I don't play it, I'm glad to have the option and it means others who enjoy the game enough to do it have the option to.

On some games I have done all the NG+ and then started another character and done all the NG+ again.

yeah the goal of many RPGs is to find that one item that makes you OP for a while, I guess New game plus can feel like that as well. Just have you plow through enemies for a while :)

What speaks to you more in the fresh experience?

Only in souls games.

Whenever I complete my games, I always go for NG+ every single time. I do it all the time for Star Wars Jedi games, Soul games, etc.

Star Wars Jedi games have so many awesome skills for sure.

But don't you max out the skill tree too fast in NG+?

Whenever I replay a game I’ll always go with NG+ option if it’s available. I love the feature. It’s great going through areas of the game again but with abilities and weapons that you didn’t have available to you at the time during the initial playthrough. I also love just melting through enemies on subsequent playthroughs. Am definitely going to play Alan Wake 2 on NG+ when then add that in.

Often. If I enjoyed my first playthrough, obviously. Lol.

No. Once I beat a game I move on. I have no idea how people can play games more than once

Absolutely not. My first playthrough is usually taking longer than someone doing 4 playthroughs. No reason to replay a game when you've been in its environment for this long.

I've been replaying Gears 5 in bits in New Game + on a higher difficulty. Having all of Jack's abilities is a must especially if you're playing by yourself.

I also really like it when games mix things up in NG+ mode like acquiring different items and/or characters by making different choices. Playing the game in a different sequence. Etc. Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross had cool/fun NG+.

No. Once I finish a game I move on. It's very very rare that i feel compelled to go back and play the same game again.

Depends if there is any legit replayability to the game.

Games like Jedi Survivor, for example, give the player a lot of reason to revisit old locations because new skills allow you to explore more. It's also fun to increase the difficulty and replay the game with those higher-level skills and equipment. It was really worth it and, imo, every bit as fun the second time as it was the first time.

In other games, like Starfield, you're basically just replaying the same game you did before but with your existing skills and frankly it's not worth another go-around and you should just keep playing the game as it is and do side missions and stuff (if you want to keep playing at all).

I need to go back and finish that game. I really enjoyed the time I spent with it, but gave it up because there were a lot of other games to play that held my interest more.

rarely but occasionally you find a game like dishonored 2 which is cleverly designed to leverage new game+ by opening up previously inaccessible areas / routes through new combinations of powers that weren't possible to acquire first time round.

not much into new game+ with fromsoft games. read people saying the real challenge begins in new game+ but ive never found that. elden ring or demon's souls for example were too easy, i got bored. i'd rather restart them from scratch and try and figure out the best run with another class / build

I have played them in the past but not often anymore. I actually focus more on eliminating my backlog than anything else. One of my strict rules is not to replay or buy old games I've already gone through. Only allowing myself to play games from the backlog. This year was great! I chopped a good 15 to 20 games off the list andany were fabulous. Metal gear rising Revengence for example is one of my new favorite games of all time. I couldn't believe fun it was and how badly it dishrags games evening coming out in 2023.

Some games like DMC don't have an official ng+ but it's kinda the same thing when you go up a difficulty...

Anyways it's a game by game basis for me. Often times things dont feel well balanced in ng+

Only for Souls games

Wait, remember you posted a pick of your Ragnorok hours with your hand in the pic giving me the finger (I lol'd at that) and I believe your hours were over 50.

So are you saying it took you over 50hrs to beat a Sony one & done game 🤣

only for platinum purposes

Depends on the game.

Just started New Game+ in Rogue Legacy 2, as it's a big part of the game for a rogue-like like that. Usually don't play New Game+ in Souls games, since that's just easy baby mode.

Yeah for me too it rarely happens that I want to replay a game right after finishing it, primarily because my backlog is so big.

But I'll make an exception for games like Dishonored or Crysis, that have different routes you could take through levels or Mass Effect and Kotor, where you want to see if your choices can change the outcome of a game.

Outside of RE, no.

Not really. Mostly Resident Evil games. Metal Gear Solid games back in the day.

just checked my PS 2023 wrapped. Turns out I only platinumed 6 games this year lmao. all long ass games like MHR, Trails of Cold Steel, Tales of Arise and Death Stranding Director's Cut.

How's that last one? Was it a fun game to play?

Somehow ended up one of the best game I ever played.

Quite the endorsement! It certainly is on my next to play list :)

Its not for everyone but if the game able to hook you, you will be spending many hours making deliveries and rebuilding "america". Its a very zen game and I highly recommends playing online.

If the game is good enough, sure.

I have hundreds of games and I bet 70-80% of them are unbeaten. But the best and most replayable games get beaten multiple times.

1. Metal Gear Solid 4 : 50-100 times (lost count after the first few dozen lol)
2. The Last of Us 1 : 13 times (exactly 3, 3, 5, 2 on PS3, PS4, PS5 and the PS6 remastered version of the TLOU remake (aka the RTX 4090)) plat'd.
3. Devil May Cry 5 : 8-10 times in my attempt to get plat but ultimately gave up on H&H.
4. Resident Evil 4 : 7-8 times in my attempt to get plat. Gave up after requiring the speedruns in NG.
5. Metal Gear Solid 2 : 6-7 times
6. Sekiro : 5 times and plat'd
7. Elden Ring : 5 times and plat'd
8. Metal Gear Solid 3: 4-5 times
9. The Last of Us 2: 4 times and plat'd
10. Demon's Souls : 4 times and plat'd
11. Dark Souls 3: 4 times with absolutely zero intention of platting.
12. Devil May Cry: 3-4 times
13. God of War : 3 times

Then there's loads of games I have beaten twice. GOWR, RDR2, UC2, Bioshock games. etc. I often buy remasters of the greatest games so list of games I have beat twice would be really long lol.

Also if you count Diablo II, beating the campaign (through online multiplayer) the answer would be 500-1000+ runs over 10 years.

@Mozelleple112: If you rebeat a game do you like going in fresh (aka how the game was originally designed for a fresh playing experience) or do you like going in with new game plus where you can get all sorts of new toys but the game wasn't necessarily designed for that.

@BassMan said:

Ever finished a game then started a new playthrough of said game back to back?

Most games are not designed for New Game+. A tell tale sign is unskippable cutscenes and walking cutscenes. There are a few games which have played New Game +, most recent is RE4.

I think Max payne 3 was especially egrigious because it held off many people like myself from replaying because of those unskippable cutscenes. You'd think the game was still loading, but nah it was baked in.

Luckily there is a mod on PC now that actually lets you skip those.

Never. I'm impressed that people don't get burned out after a full playthrough of a game.

A lot of games with new game plus has only more difficulty but now with Starfield I see many new things every time I play again so I am attracted to it.

Like keep collecting the same powers in the exact same way? Like being able to skip quests? Oh this is so original and worth resetting to world for! OMG!!!

Desperation.

@R4gn4r0k: It depends on the game really but in general / most of the time I absolutely despise going in fresh saves lol.

Look at RE4 for instance. I beat the game 7-8 times and am only missing 2 trophies to get the Platinum, which would make it my 11th platinum. But the two trophies I am missing are SPEEDRUNNING (sub 4 hours) on a brand new save (which means no NG+ weapons like Tommy Gun, RPG and all the upgrades I have built over 7 playthroughs...)

It sucks lol. No motivation to even attempt those two runs (one on normal NG and one on Hardcore NG+)

I love NG+ where you continue upgrading your weapons and levelling... like every single From Software (you see I have beaten them all 2-5 times each).

My only complaint of the two 10/10 masterpieces that are TLOU 1&2 is that your fully upgraded all your weapons too early. I always max out everything less than one and half runs in. (somewhere like 1.25x playthroughs is enough).

That's a shame as I have beaten TLOU2 four times and TLOU1 13 times... I wish there were more upgrades to chase. Should have lasted at least three full playthoughs.

Oh well.

@R4gn4r0k said:

@BassMan said:

Ever finished a game then started a new playthrough of said game back to back?

Not since I was a kid when I had limited games available to me. I have too many games to play. I will finish some of my favourites more than once, but there is usually a large gap between play-throughs... usually multiple years.