version: NEXT (4.0)
difficulty level: Story & Sword
enemy scaling: off

Is it just me or is Ciri weirdly fragile in NG+?

To preface this, I am generally overlevelled by 6-7 levels and have good gear. Geralt is pretty much steam-rolling everything. Ciri on the other hand ... not so much. Something seems off with the balance there. I don't remember if it was that bad in my original playthrough years ago, but in NG+ it kinda jumps at me.

The first time I took notice of this was the flight to the temple of the eternal fire. Some of the bandits in front of the gate had an unexpectedly huge damage output. Combined with the narrow space I got swarmed and died several pitiful deaths.

Same later with the crones fight on bald mountain. I was barely making a dent, meanwhile everything they did hit absurdly hard. Consequently, most of the fight was spent running in circles and teleporting all over the place waiting for the life bar to fill back up (and giving me a headache in the process). It was a pure battle of attrition, not what I consider a fun challenge.

Anyone else notice these difficulty spikes? Not sure of this is a result of broken scaling or by design.