A game whose primary concern is reminding me of better GameCube games that I’ve already played. From Super Mario Sunshine to The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, to Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, A Hat in Time is somehow lesser in every way than the sum of all its parts. It's the perfect example of a game made by somebody whose only life experience they have to draw upon for their art is that they played other videogames.
How very sad.

In every discipline, A Hat in Time is wildly unfocused. Each world having different rules for doling out its missions does not suit its own Act structure. Quantity of ideas does not equal the quality of them. The same goes for its moveset. Traversal options as wide as an ocean but shallow as a puddle. This game would’ve been tremendously improved without the badge system in order to better hone the level design to certain flavors of movement. But of course, Paper Mario did it, so I guess this has to too for some reason.

There's an obsessive devotion on display here to replicating its own influences with no cohesive reasoning besides them being things that Jonas Kaerlev personally liked.
This is not how games should be made.

Each world is profoundly unmemorable and uninteresting.
Mafia Town is way too big and samey-looking for an introductory area to acquaint players with. Of course, the developers didn't care, because like with everything about this game, they mistook the fact that they could make every aspect of it "the most", they should make it "the most." Clearly nobody at Gears for Breakfast is familiar with the term "too much."
Dead Bird Studios is severely hampered by having little shared space between its individual Acts. These are spaces that at first look like they're designed for multiple objectives, but are thrown away too quickly to do anything with. Because of that, they fail to work as purely linear stages either. However, I'll admit that Train Rush is a decent linear setpiece.
Subcon Forest is another casualty of the terminal too-big-for-its-own-good disease that this entire game suffers from... but this time with lots of fog and invisible walls so it's even harder to tell where you're going! The massive tree you have to climb is an absolute nightmare of camera control. I'm shocked that it made it into the finished product. I immediately rolled my eyes whenever The Snatcher came on screen. Yes, the curses in The Thousand-Year Door were cute. Why should I care exactly that you're doing the same routine?
Alpine Skyline is where all of these problems come to a head and where the game just completely stops caring. You can tell this game went through absolute development hell because this is where they put all their assets for previously-scrapped ideas that had no place of their own. Unbelievably messy. Having 30-second sequences where you have to watch Hat Kid travel along the ziplines is ridiculously tedious. It's like they looked at the Launch Stars from Super Mario Galaxy and conspired to make the worst version of it that they possibly could.

Also was I the only one who raised an eyebrow at this plot?
"Hairy woman who wants to tell everybody what to do; led on by a misguided belief that she’s carrying out justice, takes things too far and starts hurting innocent people for minor offences, and is ultimately defeated by everybody yelling at her and telling her to go away." This reads to me like an anti-SJW parable that a Redditor wrote in 2013…
Oh wait, this game IS from 2013! Hmm…
Considering that JonTron is literally in this game I suspect that the right-wing messaging is not unintentional. People who complain about cancel culture will love this game.

Disappointingly, many will overlook A Hat in Time's numerous flaws because they think it’s funny that Hat Kid says “boop” and they mistake appreciation for its influences as appreciation for the game itself. One of the most frustratingly overrated games I've come across in recent years.

Play literally any other video game that this claims to be inspired by and you’ll have a much better time.