In the case of many games, once the end credits start rolling and the story is over, that’s the end of the gameplay experience. And if players want to experience the game over again, they will have to start from the beginning. Since this can be a daunting task if the game is particularly long, the idea of New Game+ was introduced to many modern titles to make the experience more engaging.
For the most part, New Game+ is a mode of the game that unlocks once the game has already been finished once before that allows all skills and items to be carried over to the beginning of the game, allowing the player to start with all the items and abilities that took hours to obtain the first time around, typically while facing a higher difficulty or degree of challenge. However, not all titles manage this game mode equally, and some stand out far beyond other games in terms of quality.
10 Horizon Zero Dawn
One of the best PlayStation exclusives in recent years is Horizon Zero Dawn, a great departure from the Killzone series for Guerilla Games and a standout in the open-world action-adventure genre. Although it wasn’t available when the game was first released, it was later added alongside Ultra Hard difficulty and several other unlockable skins. Alongside face paint and alternate Focus colors, it gave players who loved the game the first time around a reason to dive back in with stronger machines, stronger weapons, and a better understanding of the gameplay from the beginning.
9 Dark Souls Series
One of the most iconic series out there when it comes to implementing New Game+ into its gameplay is the Dark Souls series. While the base gameplay is hard enough, forcing players to learn not only the locations of most enemy placements in the entire game but also all of the boss enemies’ movesets to ensure they don’t die in seconds, New Game+ ramps up the difficulty by making enemies hit harder while also giving players a chance to reach the level cap and fully explore parts of the world they may have missed the first time. New Game+ was so well-loved in Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2 that it was brought back for From Software’s next stand-alone game.
8 Bloodborne
Like other From Software titles, Bloodborne is vicious in its difficulty and gameplay, though this time it takes the action to a Victorian-era city complete with monsters straight out of classic horror fiction like werewolves and tentacled, Lovecraftian horrors.
New Game+ functions identically in Bloodborne as it does in Dark Souls, but the addition of the Chalice Dungeons means that players will not only have a chance to run through the story with increasing difficulty but also randomized dungeon areas to truly test their mettle.
7 Ghost of Tsushima
Like Horizon Zero Dawn, Ghost of Tsushima was a fantastic PlayStation exclusive and departure from Sucker Punch’s past works with the inFamous and Sly Cooper series. Also like Horizon, Ghost of Tsushima didn’t start with New Game+ and was introduced later, around the same time as the Legends update that added an entirely new style of play to the game. New Game+ functions very similarly to Horizon‘s, with stronger enemies and an opportunity to improve weapons to an even higher damage rating.
6 The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
There are few RPG series that can do New Game+ right, but one title that knocked it out of the park is The Witcher 3. Not only is New Game+ near mandatory if players want to tackle the hardest difficulty in the game, Deathmarch, but it also allows players to explore earlier sections of the game as the overpowered Witcher that Geralt should have begun the game as, alongside all of his armor, weapons, and skill upgrades that players obtained along the way on their first playthrough.
5 The Legend of Zelda
The Legend of Zelda series is no stranger to harder game modes, with Breath of the Wild’s Master Mode and Ocarina of Time’s Master Quest being standouts among fans, but few fans of the modern series know that the original NES title actually has a New Game+ mode. This mode, titled Second Quest, changes up the location of several Heart Containers while also changing the floor layouts and enemy locations in several dungeons, forcing players to learn an entirely new map. Second Quest also made a return in The Wind Waker, where Link wears his blue shirt for the entirety of the game while also being able to understand the Hylian text spoken by several key characters, allowing the player to understand several conversations that they couldn’t before.
4 Nier Series
Nier Automata is well known for how it handles New Game+, with each new playthrough taking the player through the same story, but through a different character’s perspective. Automata wasn’t the first game in the series to use New Game+ as a narrative mechanic, however, as the original Nier also did the exact same thing.
Unlike other New Game+ modes, players are required to complete both Niers’ New Game+ modes if they want to uncover the full story, as many elements are hidden behind specific characters and endings that can’t be seen on just one playthrough.
3 Batman: Arkham Knight
The Arkham series has implemented New Game+, also known as New Story+, since Arkham City, though the best iteration of this mode comes in the final game in the series, Arkham Knight. Unlike in a first playthrough, the Counter icons are forcibly removed and the game is set to Knightmare difficulty, and the player can take on harder combat AR challenges in the game that grant the player a Knightmare Bonus if completed. The biggest change, however, comes in the opening cinematic, with Joker jump-scaring the player during his cremation and altering the opening line to “This is how the Joker died.”
2 Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
It’s hard to get New Game+ modes in Metroidvania games right, since having every item or ability right off the bat goes against the gameplay design of the entire genre. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night takes a different approach to New Game+, granting access to new, more difficult playable characters with Richter and Maria rather than playing through the game as Alucard all over again. What this results in is not only a great way to get players going through the game over and over again but also gives them a new gameplay experience in a familiar setting.
1 Resident Evil 3 Remake
The remake of Resident Evil 3 may have been polarizing for fans of the original, especially when it came to the portrayal of Nemesis, but one thing it did spectacularly well was in its implementation of New Game+. Not only does the game require the player to complete the game on escalating difficulty levels on repeat playthroughs, but each of these playthroughs also presents the story in a different way. They also give the player more information than they received on their first adventure. While not on as grand a scale as the likes of Nier, it’s still engaging and worth the time to play through Resident Evil 3 multiple times as a result.
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