Advice on Empire State Trail - NYC to Albany / is it worth going further west?

A group of friends and I are planning to bike a large chunk of the EST. We did Syracuse to Buffalo last year, and are tempted to do NYC to Syracuse to complete it all, but wanted to see if other think the trail between Albany and Syracuse is spectacular/ worth the extra days?

Otherwise we might just stick to NYC to Albany since schedules are tight! We are also open to adding on 1-2 extra towns as long as they have Amtrak stations, so if there are towns (Schenectady, Rome, Utica, Amsterdam) that we should definitely hit, would love to know peoples' thoughts!