After completing Persona 4 and achieving one of the endings, you'll have the option to start a New Game+. This allows you to carry over certain progress from your previous playthrough, making subsequent runs easier and enabling you to achieve 100% completion or experience different story paths.
What Carries Over:
- Social Stats: Your maxed-out Courage, Knowledge, Expression, Diligence, and Understanding will carry over. This is a huge advantage, allowing you to unlock Social Links and dialogue options much earlier.
- Persona Compendium: All Personas registered in the Compendium will be available for summoning from the start.
- Money: Your accumulated Yen carries over.
- Equipment: All weapons, armor, and accessories in your inventory carry over.
- Skill Cards: All collected Skill Cards carry over.
- Play Time: Your total play time carries over.
- Key Items (Specific): Some specific key items, like the 'Costume' items, carry over.
What Does NOT Carry Over:
- Social Link Ranks: All Social Links reset to Rank 0.
- Party Member Levels/Skills: Your party members start at level 1 with their base Personas.
- Protagonist Level/Personas: The Protagonist starts at level 1, and his equipped Personas are reset (though you can summon them from the Compendium).
- Consumable Items: Most consumable items do not carry over.
- Requests: All requests (Fox quests) reset.
Benefits of NG+:
- Easier 100% Completion: With max Social Stats and access to powerful Personas, it's much easier to max all Social Links and complete all quests.
- True Ending Focus: You can focus purely on the true ending path without worrying about stat grinding.
- Izanagi-no-Okami: If you achieved the True Ending, you can fuse the ultimate Persona, Izanagi-no-Okami, in NG+. This Persona is incredibly powerful and makes the game significantly easier.
- Experimentation: Try different party compositions, Social Link paths, or dialogue choices.
New Game+ is highly recommended for players who want to experience everything Persona 4 has to offer.