Yea, I thought the game was way too short and I thought I did a fair ammount of side quests too.
I remember many a game in the past playing for weeks well into the wee hours of the morning after getting home from work, took me three days for this one (36 hours total on first playthrough) Great game however, just felt like I only played maybe half of it.
As far as replayability however, it's there for sure (Different choices for background story, reactions from NPC's and companions, different main char classes) but I never thought that simply respecing your char was exactly something that added to the "replayability factor" To me that's simply something you do if you completely mess up your party which is easy to do with limited levels and broad choices.
Not sure what any of that has to do with the hype, but there you go =P