I too read your thread. It seems there's always someone who want to argue for the sake of arguing and make up a lot of 'fluff' to keep it going.
That aside, I was about to buy the game on steam, but when I discovered the no new game + mode I put my cc away. Several of my friends feel the same way.
I'm truly surprised the devs overlooked this. It's a feature a lot of old school gamers just expect to be there.