didnt comment on this earlier, but yaaaas.
playing a regular new game on GMGOW is pretty brutal, and particularly so in the early stages. before reaching the lake its a really high/frustrating learning curve. and then for the most part it becomes manageable-ish with some notable exceptions:
- basically all the side quests seemed much more difficult
- first 2 dragons
- brok's side quests with the ring. the first one has a pretty big arena/battle before facing the soul devourer. the second one has the section with multiple dark elves
- sindri's first side quest with the different rooms
- helheim and niflheim were more of a pain
- aside from side content, the dark elf boss and the magni/modi battle were much harder
i didnt think valkyries were significantly harder, with the main exception being that you could no longer rely on boy's arrows to disrupt the aerial attacks. you have to manually throw your axe
overall, i think playing GMGOW on NG+ was an easier experience, except the valkyries were significantly harder, since i they get different attacks on NG+