Everyone has their own way of learning the course material and passing the exams and at the end of the day its what works for you. I am currently on Mod 3 at BGS and after the past two modules I have found what works for me is to get through the material as quick as possible the first time then hit the bank and learn the way the questions are asked for a particular subject then go back to the material. This then focuses my knowledge and I understand the things I need to know and filter out the rubbish. I then usually construct a feedback document from everything I can find a few days before the exam and go over the relevant information.
For example I spent weeks stressing over Air Law and learning everything there was to learn about it and managed to get to a point where I was getting a good average score every time on the bank. I then went through the feedback a few days before which helped me out massively and I took the risk of only focusing on a few key topic that kept cropping up. When I took the exam I was lucky enough that all of these came up and I passed it.
On the other side my AGK exam was a bit banky but mostly new stuff and because I understood the subject matter I aced it. So really like most people have been saying you need to do both. If you understand the subject matter then new questions won't phase you.
The ATPLS are basically a game and are not designed to be fair so you need to play the game