Basic Trope: Starting a new game with the stats and equipment earned from a previous one.
- Straight: After completing the game, the player is offered to start the game over on a new save file named "New Game+". While playing on this file, the Player Character (and, if applicable, the party) retains their levels and equipment from the last playthrough's ending. The plot and content of the game is otherwise the same, except maybe for one minor alteration or two to the endgame.
- Exaggerated:
- All enemies are now level one, from the basic Mook to the Final Boss.
- The party retains literally all possible progress, thus breezing through the game far faster than before.
- Downplayed: All enemies are stronger, to provide a decent match for the player's end game stats.
- Justified:
- The characters in the game have time traveled back to where their journey began.
- The characters are stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop.
- To train the heroes for the upcoming fight against the True Final Boss, Temporal Thomas sends the heroes to a parallel world that functions as a harder version of their previous journey.
- Inverted: The enemies retain all their bonuses such as Level Scaling or battle adaptions, yet the heroes are reset to square one.
- Your party is forced to stay as Level 1 permanently and unable to obtain equipment at all while every boss in the game is now far more difficult than before. The game even calls it New Game Minus and refers to it as "for masochistic players who hate themselves".
- Subverted: It seems like a standard New Game Plus, but something in the previous play through has affected the plot of this one, continuing the story.
- Instead of the world being the same as before, the party are shunted to a parallel universe that looks the same but the colours are different, enemies and bosses are stronger and have new powers and the Final Boss is completely different. The True Final Boss, Evulz Soul is also exclusive to the Boss Rush instead of appearing in New Game Plus.
- After his previous defeat, Emperor Evulz retreats into his dreams with various locale being warped versions of the various areas populated by his henchmen, with them being replaced with stronger dream facsimiles. After making to Evulz himself, the party decide to kill him, causing his True Final Boss form to emerge from his corpse and challenge them while the dream world collapses.
- Double Subverted: A True New game plus is then unlocked after the Golden Ending.
- Parodied:
- The game just drops you off at the final boss fight, and tells you "see, this is way easier than having to play through it all over again!"
- Nothing is carried over from the previous saves, but the main character becomes a lot more self-aware and judgemental of the plot, and the story shortens tenfold by avoiding all the Railroading and Only Idiots May Pass segments.
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted: There is no New Game Plus.
- Enforced: "We don't have time to add real replay value, so just slap on a New Game Plus mode or something."
- Lampshaded: "What, couldn't be bothered to add post game content?"
- Back again are we, Bob? I'll be sure to make you suffer this time!"
- Invoked: Seeking to set right what once went wrong, Temporal Thomas hurls the cast backwards in time.
- Exploited: The characters in the game use this as a chance to Set Right What Once Went Wrong.
- Emperor Evulz uses his knowledge of the previous timeline to try again, this time with devastating results.
- Defied: "Why would I ever want to go through all that again? Unlike Lance, I'm not some twisted fantasist with a hero complex."
- You are given a chance to start over by an illusion of Temporal Thomas. If you agree, you get the bad ending but you'll be on route to the good ending if you defy him because the game's Central Theme is learning to take responsibility for your actions.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: "I could've sworn we did all this before, but at least we get to keep everything from our journey."
- Implied: Bob wakes up and checks his bag, noticing all the strange items from what he swore was a dream he just had.
- Whenever Bob talks to each of the party members, he appears to them as very charismatic and understanding, winning them over instantly and making them aware of their endgame power.
- Deconstructed: The Characters in game are aware that everything has started over.
- Unfortunately for the heroes, New Game Plus also applies to Emperor Evulz and his henchmen. In the case of the Emperor, he is reborn as Malevulz and possesses overwhelming power and a new set of skills to really test the party's might. At this point, all of your equipment, stats and powers carrying over is a mercy rather than a bonus reward.
- Alternatively, the game simply isn't much fun anymore due to the bonus making things too easy.
- Reconstructed: Each time the game resets, the characters learn more about their journey, uncover the True Final Boss, and reach the Golden Ending.
- Since the villains are the same as the first playthrough, Bob doesn't even need to form a party and effectively curbstomps Emperor Evulz due to keeping all his equipment and Storming the Castle in under an hour. The game even gives you a special ending if you speedrun to The Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
- Despite Malevulz's apocalyptic power, he's so unrelentingly cruel and willing to destroy the world that the party are able to convince his henchmen to join them, leading to the True Final Boss fight with Perfect Malevulz.
- Played For Drama: As part of a plot to make the party give up, Emperor Evulz traps them in a Lotus-Eater Machine and tries to gaslight them into thinking their adventure never happened. However, the heroes have all their power from before, signalling that something about all this feels off and that they're trapped in a simulation.
Start a New Game? Yes/No
