I just think that he was able to shine so much because he was part of a really weak generation in football, Messi and Iniesta aside I don t see too many great players. I see very very talented players, but talent does'n t always translate in greatness (Ozil, Robben, Ibraimovic, Van Persie, Sneijder, Ribery, Benzema, Dimaría, Aguero, Mata, Silva and so on) That is probably a great merit, that he and Messi are more regular and consistent at club level than these others guys.
His finishing skills (both feet and head) are superb, he could compete with great 9s (Romario, Van Basten, Ronaldo, Batistuta, Henry, Van Nistelroy, Jairzihno, Rossi, Raúl and so on) His speed and power are great, with space on the pitch he can be very difficult to deal with.
However his skills with the ball are overrated, his goal average on free kicks and shots from outside the box is lousy, right now out of 100 shots he just scored 2 goals on free kicks, his dribble relies to much on speed, without space to use his speed, his dribble is not good enough to beat tight marks (at least not against top teams with quality defenders) it is a flashy dribble but not very effective, Messi does'n t need space to make his dribbling skills beat defenders, he can loose tight marks in a very short space, Cristiano Ronaldo struggles when he has no space to run with the ball.
And at last, his playmaking skills are NON EXISTENT, he doesn t have that quality, that many great players had (Maradona, Rivelino, Riquelme, Pele, Cruyff, Zidane, Laudrup, Bergkamp, Messi, Baggio, Best, Platini, Zico, Socrates, Gullit, Del Piero, Totti and so on - I don't mean to put all of these players in the same level, they just have much better playmaking ability than Cristiano Ronaldo) he doesn't have the creativity to build up plays for the team, or the intelligence to read the match and create chances for his teammates, he plays solo, he can make an assist here and there after running solo for 10 or 25 meters, that does not mean he has playmaking ability.
So I agree with you. He is Overrated, but to be fair many players are nowadays.