Is there a way to speed up / Slow Down an entire VFX graph system as a whole?

Those playrate controls are available at runtime per Visual effect component via C# API: https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Experimental.VFX.VisualEffect.html

However those controls (playRate, pause…) are not serialized which means values are set to default when the effect is loaded. If you want to serialize them, you have to do it with a small script alongside your visualeffect component.