Yeah, that's a very good question. Unfortunately, I have been hearing how great P:KM story and companions are, and I have hard time believing that we played the same game. So, yeah, I am remaining doubtful whenever WoTR will offer anything appealing to me until I give it a go myself.
Like I said earlier and I'm trying to be very objective here, I think some elements of the story are improved a lot. The pacing is much much better, you don't feel like nothing happens and all the things you do feel important enough and not like filler. The companions roster is the best in recent years at the very least, and of course not all of them perfectly written but the good ones are really good. Moreover, some of them are actually unique.
The story is still not too great at least until chapter 3, which is a significant chunk of the game, but the companions are good enough to carry it imo. And since I don't care for the gameplay almost at all, and outright despise buffinder system for the most part, if the story was bad I would have ditched this game a long time ago
