I think it's quite the opposite, in fact some of the upgrades are so worthless and some of the Paths like getting explosives and extra items are so good that when i rushed for those i was able to complet the game in under 5 mins, while doing it the way your talking about like i did my first time around it took me just under half an hour
Nah, they're right. Some of the upgrades combine multiplicatively with each other making them ridiculously broken.
Extra item chance, amount, and rares combine multiplicatively with everything. Power, crit chance, and crit damage are multiplicative with the first 2 being great early on. Explosive chance + damage are multiplicative with each other with explosive's base damage far out pacing anything else available for how little it costs to get it.
With my terrible 7 clicks per second I'm just about at the 7 min barrier. The other guy probably clicks a lot faster than me.