I wouldn’t doubt it tastes watery to you. You have way more experience with pawpaws so I’ll defer to you. Shenandoah tastes light to me. It’s definitely not rich, but I like the lightness of the flavor profile. How does Allegheny, Potomac, or Sunflower taste to you? Do you like Wabash or NC-1?
Before this year, I only tasted a few pawpaws cultivars (besides wild ones) and don’t even remember the name of those I did taste years back. My frame of reference is perhaps more limited since I didn’t have a lot of exposure to pawpaws, other than its far relatives - cherimoya, sweet-sop, neither of which I’m crazy about.
Someone near me has a single varietal branch grafted on a 16+ foot tall mature pawpaw. It still requires hand pollination for properly sized fruit. Otherwise there’s little to no fruit set for the past 10 years, despite the rest of their trees getting pollinations: apples, plumbs, peaches, chestnuts, heartnuts, etc…
I would suggest finding someone with pawpaws and asking for a taste. Buzz at Perfect Circle (montpelier, vt) is about 2 hours north of you and selects for pawpaws that are early ripening.
Most of the pawpaws that I consider “strong” aren’t really intense imo. It’s not the adjective I would chose to describe the nature of the flavor. To me, the flavor is just “heavy” and or more like wild pawpaws. There is one tree that was producing small Shenandoah, maybe half the size due to lack of watering, and those fruits were pretty fruity. They were closer to Allegheny like flavor.