Nova's author has stated multiple times iirc, that he's writing the story because his actual goal is to write a good story and characters and such
He doesn't deny that it seems strong just to be strong, but denies that that's true, even having a bunch of stuff stronger than Nova, the OC everyone claims he just wants to be the strongest thing in fiction.
And having actually read it, while there are just huge Cosmology exposition dumps early on at least, a lot of it is actually focused on, well, the story. The interactions between characters, setting up plot details like the nature of Ethos and Nova's family line, the war with the Demoreals, etc, rather than just being a story made just to get tier 0.
People who watch his tiktoks do also express an interest in the story beyond just the strength, some people praising its writing, the comments on the chapters doing the same, etc. He's even actually made lore videos on the series, rather than just scaling ones. It's just that considering he's a tiktok scaler, it's a lot easier to get views if he scales it first, garners interest, then starts talking about lore and stuff.
As for how strong he actually is, yeah its 1-A+, High 1-A if you absolutely stretch it