GoblinWars New Game Plus Guide: Which RPGs Are Worth Replaying
New Game Plus Guide: Which RPGs Are Worth Replaying
New Game Plus (NG+) restarts the story while carrying over character progress, equipment, or both. The best NG+ implementations add new content, harder challenges, and narrative reveals that justify a second playthrough. The worst just make enemies hit harder. Here is what each major RPG offers.
Essential NG+ Experiences
Elden Ring NG+ through NG+7 progressively increases enemy health and damage. Your character carries over all equipment, levels, and upgrades. NG+ is significantly easier than the first playthrough because you start with a complete build, making it ideal for exploring areas and questlines you missed. The real challenge begins at NG+3 and beyond, where enemies become genuine threats again. Unique items (remembrance boss weapons, talismans from quests) can be obtained a second time.
Chrono Trigger invented meaningful NG+. Carrying over all levels and equipment makes combat trivial, but the game adds 13 different endings accessible only in NG+ by fighting the final boss at different story points. Fighting Lavos immediately after the first time travel sequence at level 70+ produces a completely different ending than fighting at the story’s natural conclusion.
Persona 5 Royal NG+ carries over social stats (Knowledge, Guts, Proficiency, Kindness, Charm), money, equipment, registered Personas in the compendium, and skill cards. The critical benefit is social stats: maxing all five stats in a first playthrough is extremely tight. NG+ with max stats lets you pursue all confidant storylines (social links) without time pressure, accessing the true ending content with Akechi and the third semester.
Dark Souls 3 NG+ adds new ring variants (Life Ring +1, +2, +3 only available in successive NG+ cycles) and increases soul gain. Covenant items that require grinding (Proof of a Concord Kept, Vertebra Shackle) can be earned more efficiently in NG+ due to higher invasion activity at appropriate soul levels.
NG+ That Adds Content
The Witcher 3 Death March NG+ scales all enemies to your level plus a difficulty offset, creating genuinely challenging combat at endgame. Your complete alchemy build (all decoctions, all potion upgrades) faces enemies designed to test it. Grand Master Witcher gear requires NG+ crafting diagrams.
NieR: Automata requires multiple playthroughs to see the full story. Route B replays events from a different character’s perspective with new gameplay mechanics. Routes C, D, and E contain the actual story conclusion. This is not optional replay content; it is how the game is designed to be experienced.
Baldur’s Gate 3 does not have formal NG+ but encourages replays through different origin characters. Playing as The Dark Urge provides a completely different narrative with unique dialogue, cutscenes, and story branches. Each class creates different solutions to the same problems: a Bard talks their way past encounters a Fighter charges through.
NG+ Not Worth It
Some games offer NG+ that simply restarts the story with higher enemy stats and no new content. If the combat was not the primary draw, replaying 40+ hours with numerically harder enemies and no narrative surprises is a poor time investment. Check whether NG+ adds meaningful content before committing.
How to Maximize NG+ Value
Complete all missable content in your first playthrough that requires minimal time investment (collecting unique items, triggering one-time events). Save the content that requires choosing between mutually exclusive paths for NG+, where you can pick the opposite choice. This approach gives you maximum content across two playthroughs with minimum redundancy.
Why New Game Plus Matters for Game Design
New Game Plus serves a deeper purpose than replay value. It acknowledges that mastery transforms the player experience. A first playthrough of Dark Souls is about survival and learning. A New Game Plus run is about dominance and optimization. The same levels that terrified you become victory laps, and the game’s difficulty scaling ensures that complacency is still punished. Developers use NG+ to reveal content that only makes sense after completing the story: Nier Automata famously requires multiple playthroughs to see its true ending, with each cycle revealing new perspectives on the narrative. Chrono Trigger pioneered this approach, making NG+ an integral part of experiencing all 13 endings. Games that treat NG+ as a simple difficulty modifier miss the opportunity to use it as a narrative and mechanical tool that rewards the player’s growing expertise.
For more on RPG replay value, see our Best RPG Side Quests and RPG Difficulty Settings Guide. For specific game guides, check Beginners Guide to Baldurs Gate 3.