I played through it an equal number of times to how many endings there are, which is 6, if I recall. My first playthrough was very slow going. To be honest, I didn't really like the game that much thanks to the thing that always frustrates me in Souls games, bosses with multiple enemies. But, after I went back and did Journey 2, I really started to like the game a lot more. I could cut out the bosses I didn't need to fight since I didn't need to level up that much. I could just focus on the sidequests I needed to do to achieve the ending I was going for and doing that made me see a lot more of the game than I probably would have otherwise.
Journey 2 and further are where the game really shine compared to new game. It's very, very good regardless, but you can tell From Software really wanted people to play through multiple times and were seemingly quite confident that they would.