Yakuza: Like A Dragon New Game Plus explained - how to unlock it and what carries over

Once you’ve beaten the main story of Yakuza: Like A Dragon, you’re probably going to want to do it again to grind out character stats and abilities. Thankfully there’s a New Game Plus option waiting for you on the menu, and it’s the best way to get your characters to the max level and ensure you complete every sub-story. 

To unlock New Game + you simply need to beat all 15 chapters of Yakuza: Like A Dragon. Doing so will unlock the option on the main menu, and will allow you to start the game fresh with your stats being carried over. The things that are carried over in New Game+ are level, money, gear, items and quest completion. The two major missing elements are substories and bonds, so you’ll sadly need to re-do those sections of the game.  

When you select New Game Plus, you’ll be presented with the normal difficulty option from the main story, and two brand new difficulty levels. If you’re wondering why you couldn’t change the option in the main-game that’s because normal is the lowest it will go, and the other options only unlock in New Game+. 

• Hard: Recommended Level 50+. All enemies are strengthened and battle rewards are increased. 
• Legend: Recommended Level 70+. All enemies are further strengthened and battle rewards are increased even more. 

One thing that’s important to note is that New Game+ is different to the Premium Adventure that Like A Dragon will inform you about once you’ve beaten the game.

To be clear, The Premium Adventure is essentially just a free-roaming section of the game that will let you play through the extra dungeons and side content such as mini-games or any leftover side quest substories to your heart’s content. It's useful for wrapping up features of the game you didn't get to touch for achievements - we went back and finished all of the Vocational School Tests and visited all of the Honk-Honk locations one last time before New Game Plus, for instance. 

New Game+ does what you'd expect - it resets everything about the story, allowing you to pick up a brand new run of Like a Dragon's narrative while retaining your level, gear, items, sidequest completion and money - thus allowing you to focus on the super-hard combat of those NG+ exclusive difficulties.