"New game plus - quests will have no rewards..."

[Metalwrath]

I never said Souls was the first series to have it, I said it was the series to popularize harder difficulties. Chrono Trigger was the first game to popularize the term "New Game +" and its version didn't include difficulty scaling at all unless you count fighting the final boss much earlier on than you're supposed to a higher difficulty.

I guess you never heard of the resident evil series then.This was back on ps1 so it might be before your time but it was games like that that popularised it.