It's not one or the other — it should always be all things together. It's like asking if you should look out for zinc, protein, calcium, or fiber when picking a fruit. It should be all the things combined.
But for all those 4, hype is probably the least important. Because if the project is generally good enough, it should get some hype sometime in the future.
but the reality is we should chasing for early hype if we want some good profit. Even in small market, like i usually visit gaspump dex in ton ecosystem, the one which fly to 20x is a nonsense memecoin, while a token i bought because of good enough project, it is still in the same place since launched till now