Mostly bad or at least pointless - It can work like in Dark Souls 2 where NG+ raise the difficulty but lets you keep your upgraded gear and stats and also adds new enemies and enemy placement. That's the best implementation I've seen of NG+. But in most games it tends to destroy the balance of the game and also destroy immersion.

Still as Stingingvelvet said: it's not really "bad" since it's optional. As for if you should continue on NG+ after a hiatus: well go with you gut and do what sounds most fun to you.

Reggie: If it's not fun why bother?

NG+ is never a bad thing. It's an additional option available for the players. It's always better to have more content than less, right? Even if it's fully optional (and NG+ is always fully optional). The quality of NG+ implementation differs. Sometimes it gives the player nothing more than increased level of monsters. But even in this case it's better than the lack of it.

NG+ is a single player substitute for endgame in online games. While a multiplayer focused game can't be good without decent endgame, a single player title can be good without it. But it's still nice to see this mode, because it gives an additional choice for the players.

Normally I don`t like NG+, but in case of Bioshock 1 it was very useful. I love that game and replay it from to time. NG there helps me to not pay much attention to ammo and weapon management (beause everything is already collected) so I can literally storm through story once more. You may call it "casual fun".

that's such a vague question that it is really impossible to answer. it really depends on the game how it has been implementd, as well as how you feel. often a game+ is more difficult (not always, though), so if you want achallage then go fo it

Not a fan, I'd like everything to be potentially available on a first playthrough.

Good, of course.

Personally I've never used it. It often feels like someone's trying too hard to shoehorn "rogue" style mechanics into normal non rogue-like games, and as Cavalary said it often encourages devs to make aspects of the game too artificially grindy or gate content behind replays. Good games don't need the mode for people to want to replay them and the "but I never got the chance to use SuperWeapon X because it only appeared 5 mins before the end so I need to start a new game with it" is simply bad gameplay design precisely for making it appear too late to be useful. Doom 2 never left it until Map 30/30 to access the BFG9000, Deus Ex gave the GEP gun & plasma rifle long before Area 51, etc. It's just poorly thought out game design if New Game+ is there to fix miscalculated item progression if that's still a thing in new games.

maybe my memory is wrong, but wasn't there a game with game+ as separate dlc?

I don't like it. For those using it because they didn't get the chance to use powerful X item at the end of the "normal" game, how is "being gifted it" right at the start of a new game any different from using a cheat to add same item in normal game (New Game+ for Doom = idkfa, New Game+ for Baldur's Gate = CLUAConsole:SetCurrentXP("10000000"), etc)...

The cure for level designers putting a Power Item in too late to be useful is not to cheat it in at the start of a new game, it's finding better level designers who know how to make better mid-game levels and put it somewhere there where it makes more sense.

I like it as an option, but only play it in games I really, REALLY enjoyed.

In ARPGs though, it's pretty much mandatory (Titan Quest, Diablo and its clones etc.). That is why there is usually also a difficulty increase. Most of the time, it's just lazily scaling enemy damage and HP, but I've seen some games that give enemies better AI, new moves, makes enemy animations faster etc.in NG+.

Why that genre specifically? Games like Ys and Crystalis have done fine without any New Game +.

so restart the game with your champs just finished it?
probably one of the most useless feature ever

You'll find I have nearly nothing to do with the modern gamer :)) And only playing a few per year, I likely spend more time on a game played once than those who replay do with their replays, want to experience all of it and am very thorough, but it must be fully experience-able in one playthrough.

Point is that if there's "replay value", it must not be created in a way that prevents those who want to play the game once and then move on from experiencing all of it. Just have higher attributes for both player and enemies, whatever, let it be for those who want it. Have anything actually relevant in the game, anything that makes a difference beyond, say, giving a +2 to something, and that's a problem.

Depends on how it is implemented. I don't like it when it's basically a lazy way to get you to replay the game to make it longer. I get particularly annoyed when progression in the original game feels too limited - e.g. Borderlands, where you just about get to the end of one of the three skill trees for your character by the end of the game (and that's if you really focus on one tree and invest the minimum number of points in each level). I'd rather have better progression in the main game and different characters to add replayability.

Usually when new game + is offered, I forget about it and only play it when I just want to experience the game again with maybe harder difficulty and a slightly different play through. Other than that, I ignore it and do not use it. However, for dishonored 2, I only tried it to have both corvo's and emily's power in one play through, something that was a great addition in my opinion that was not present in the first dishonored that allowed you to collect more runes to unlock all powers.