I must be doing something wrong then. I wasn't getting any useful notifications on my watch until I installed all the corresponding watch apps to the phone apps. The watch runs WearOS 3.5. But either way: getting a decent experience should not be this hard.

I've got it the way I like it now but it was a lot of installing software and playing with settings. Which is fun! But it means I would never recommend WearOS to somebody who isn't geeky about Android.