I said “If you’ve played before” with the belief that most people coming back to this already started the main campaign on PS4, and most likely, statistically I would guess, didn’t beat it. I would assume that without hearing a recommendation to start at a different place, they might start back up the main story(from the beginning) and get bored and quit pretty early.
That’s what I did when I first restarted. Luckily, I was sorting metacritic one day by best user reviews on PS4 and came across the Blood and Wine user/critic reviews and saw how insane those reviews are, over on metacritic. This “advice” from metacritic got me to start Blood and Wine from the main menu instead of the main campaign and I’m so glad I did. Unlike you, I found Hearts of Stone a little less engaging, but still better than the main game. Blood and Wine had by far the best story, imo, which is why I recommended it, but I understand we all have different preferences.