I disagree
Thac0. Kingmaker had better companions, better voice acting and better companion quests and arc. I have the same sentiment towards some companions, plain dislike but yet cannot do without them because there is no other options (exept mercenaries).
Also how do you like more the crusade thing, which is plain broken at the moment, and completely unbalanced (wizard generals) over the card thing in Kingmaker, which yes it was simpler but at least felt less intrusive.
On most other points I agree with you and I want to add that the soundtrack is much better than Kingmaker (not that Kingamer OST was bad but we are on another level here).
Daraen, Wenduag and Ember are all as good as Nok Nok if you can stand their bullshit.
Those three routinely have amazing dialogue chains where they answer each other 2-3 times over morality on alignment choices.
The writing there gets better than all of Kingmaker, but I guess not many people run 2 neutral evils together with a neutral good.
Also Avellone
probably having written one character opens a quite interesting conundrum. Which one is the Avellone character here? I could spot them pretty well in Torment and Kingmaker, here it is harder. I think Daraen is by him, but hard to tell since I like so many now. I will probably open a poll after beating the game, would make for an interesting gamble, as we will not hear the answer until the court stuff is over.