If you're asking when to start Persona 4 Golden New Game Plus, you've already done the hard work — you've played through one of the best JRPGs ever made and you're ready to go back in. The question isn't really whether to start NG+. It's about timing it correctly so you're not wasting the advantages carryover gives you, and so you don't miss the Golden Ending a second time.
Here's the full framework: what you keep, what resets, when to pull the trigger, and how to route a second run that actually earns the game's true conclusion.
What Carries Over Into NG+ (And What Doesn't)
Understanding the carryover list isn't just administrative — it determines how you should play your second run from the opening hours.
Carryover items and stats
The following transfer into a new game:
- Persona Compendium — every Persona you registered carries over, ready to resummon
- Yen — your full money balance comes with you
- Items and equipment — key items, consumables, and gear all carry over
- Max Social Stats — Courage, Diligence, Knowledge, Expression, and Understanding carry over at whatever level you left them, including maxed values
- Unlocked Skill Cards — any Skill Cards you've unlocked remain available
- Cleared dungeon floors — dungeon progress is retained
The Compendium carryover is the biggest mechanical advantage. Powerful Personas that cost hundreds of thousands of yen to fuse — Yoshitsune, Lucifer, and other late-game fusions — are available to resummon from the very first days of April. That collapses the difficulty curve for most of the game.
What resets completely
- Social Link ranks — all S-Links reset to Rank 0, no exceptions
- Calendar progress — you start back at April 11th
- Story flags — all cutscenes and story events replay from the beginning
- Dungeon enemy encounters — Shadows respawn
The Social Link reset surprises a lot of players because it feels like it should work differently given that stats carry over. It doesn't. Every S-Link, including Marie's, starts from scratch. What carrying over your maxed Social Stats does is remove the stat-gating. Links that previously required maxed Knowledge or Courage unlock immediately. You can start advancing them on day one instead of grinding stats for months before you're eligible.
The Right Time to Start NG+: Three Decision Points
After the True Ending
This is the standard scenario and the one where NG+ pays off most. You've seen the True Ending, you know the full story, and now you're starting over with your full Compendium, maxed stats, and a clear picture of the Social Link calendar. The Golden Ending and the Hollow Forest are in front of you, and you have every tool to reach them efficiently.
Starting NG+ from the True Ending is also the cleanest emotionally. You've finished the story you were playing. Everything in NG+ is additive: more content, better ending, no unfinished business from the previous run.
After a bad or normal ending
If you hit the bad ending or the standard (non-True) ending, starting NG+ immediately is the right call. You missed a specific decision tree, and the fastest way back to that branch is a new run with your Compendium and stats intact rather than loading a save and replaying from an earlier point.
The True Ending requires a specific set of correct answers during the final dungeon confrontation. Missing any of them locks you out. If you already know what went wrong, NG+ lets you burn through the game quickly with full gear and replay the ending correctly without the 60-plus hour slog of a cold start.
Immediately after your first dungeon clear
This is niche, but relevant for challenge runners and min-maxers. If your goal is a single fully optimized run rather than two narrative playthroughs, some players start NG+ after clearing Yukiko's Castle — early enough that little has been invested in the current run — just to carry forward even a modest starting Compendium.
This only makes sense if you're explicitly building for efficiency from the start and don't care about experiencing the story naturally. For everyone else, play the first run through to a real ending.
NG+ Exclusive Content You're Actually Playing For
There are three concrete reasons to start NG+, and one of them is a hard lock.
The Hollow Forest is a dungeon that does not exist on a first playthrough. It's Marie's dungeon, gated behind her Social Link, and it only unlocks in NG+ after specific conditions are met — you need to have max stats (carried over) and advance Marie's link far enough before the game's deadline. Players who never start NG+ are permanently locked out of this dungeon and the story content inside it. There is no other route to it. The Golden Ending is the conclusion the game is built around. It resolves Marie's arc and changes the final sequence of events in a way that the True Ending doesn't. If the True Ending is the real ending of Persona 4, the Golden Ending is the real ending of Persona 4 Golden — the version-exclusive content that justifies the definitive edition. Maxing all Social Links in a single run becomes genuinely achievable in NG+. On a first run, stat requirements and calendar pressure make it nearly impossible to max every S-Link unless you're following a tight guide. With maxed Social Stats carrying over and the Compendium removing the need to grind money or Persona levels, your free time goes almost entirely toward Social Links. A complete S-Link run is realistic without a FAQ open every session.How to Build Your Second Run Efficiently
Social Link priority order
Front-load Marie. Start her Social Link in April and treat it as the highest priority for the first two in-game months. The calendar pressure on her link is the single biggest source of missed Golden Endings — she has a hard deadline, and players who deprioritize her early consistently fall short.
After Marie, target the S-Links that gave you the most trouble the first time. With max Social Stats, previously gated links like Strength (requiring high Courage) and Devil or Tower (requiring max Understanding or Expression) unlock immediately, so you can start them in spring instead of fall.
Party member Social Links are also faster to max in NG+ because you're spending fewer turns on prerequisite answers. You remember the correct choices and can advance ranks without wasted conversations.
Compendium and Persona fusion strategy
With a full Compendium carrying over, treat the early game like a late-game run. Resummon your strongest Personas immediately — the gold cost is the only barrier, and your carried-over yen covers it. There's no reason to grind early Shadows or build Personas from scratch through mid-tier fusions.
For fusion, focus on Skill Card usage to patch weaknesses on Compendium Personas rather than building new ones from scratch. This saves time and money. Reserve fusion chains for any specific Personas you want to register that you didn't complete in the first run.
NG+ on a Time Budget: Speedrunning Your Second Playthrough
For players who want the Golden Ending without another 80-hour investment, NG+ is completable in under 40 hours if you're experienced and deliberate.
Set the difficulty to Very Easy. With a Compendium full of high-level Personas, bosses that normally require multi-turn strategies can be ended in a single action. Dungeons that took hours on a first run collapse to 20-30 minutes. Very Easy exists precisely for this use case and there's no shame in using it.
Skip all cutscenes you've already seen. The game lets you skip most story sequences, and on a second run that's the single largest time-saver across the playthrough.
For Social Links, use a calendar guide to identify the minimum required visits to max Marie before her deadline. You don't need to be optimal on every other S-Link — identify the ones required for the Golden Ending, schedule them, and let the others fill in around them.
Keep your non-battle days almost exclusively on Social Links, not stat grinding. Your stats are already maxed. Every afternoon and evening is Social Link time.
Is NG+ Worth It? The Honest Answer
If you didn't reach the True Ending, NG+ isn't optional — it's the fix. Start it.
If you hit the True Ending and feel satisfied, NG+ is still worth doing once for the Hollow Forest and Golden Ending. Marie's arc is genuinely good, the Golden Ending hits differently once you've already seen the True Ending, and a second run with full Compendium carryover is a materially different experience from your first. It's the version of P4G where you're in control instead of scrambling.
If you hit the True Ending, felt complete, and have no interest in Marie's story or completionism — skip it. NG+ doesn't add gameplay mechanics or change the core loop. It's more of the same game, better-tuned. That's a feature for fans and a non-factor for players who are ready to move on.
My call: play NG+ once. Do it for the Golden Ending. Route Marie's link first, use Very Easy if you want speed, and let the Compendium make you feel like a god for 40 hours. That's what it's there for.
If you're deep in a P4G run and want more routing detail, the Icicle Disaster Persona 4 Golden Social Link guide breaks down the full calendar with day-by-day recommendations. Or if you want context on where P4G sits in the broader genre, check the full Persona 4 Golden review and the ranked JRPG list — useful if you're deciding what to play after you've wrung everything out of Inaba.