It is terrible, not exaggerated, and it did ruin the game for me. You telling me that I should be able to rush through the content if I don't like it is a really poor defense. I enjoyed the game, and I (falsely) assumed that it was going to reward me for trying to understand more of what's going on in the world after this timeline reset.
It's been a while since I played it, and my memory is kinda piss sometimes, but I know for certain I was very much in love with this game before Chapter 5, and fell off hard I think somewhere through Chapter 6. If it truly only takes "a couple of hours" to get through all of Chapter 5-8(?) then I don't really think the game does a great job at laying out the minimum requirements, because I'm pretty sure I spent at least 2 hours on Chapter 5 alone. The battles were roughly the same as the last go around but tougher, and my team wasn't quite strong enough to fight a few of them, so I had to grind in at least one place. I remember some vampire-like boss that was doing work. Anyway, throughout all of this I was looking for new dialog - some valuable addition to the story, and there were some fun new exchanges, but I really don't remember anything standing out. Certainly nothing that would have made be consider Chapter 5 as being worth my time.
I reached Chapter 6, convinced myself to play probably another hour to see what had changed in the world, and once again I wasn't seeing it. And maybe I'm wrong but the battles were even tougher than before? I consulted a friend who did play through more, and he told me it resets a couple more times and that not a whole lot changes. After this I quit and traded in the game.
On the subject of repeating big chunks of game as part of the narrative, Route B in Nier Automata was also terrible. At least in that case it onlyy happened once, and felt like it added more meaningful story.
