You know, you're not wrong about that, especially given that RAC is made by the same folks as Spyro. I will say there are a handful of mechanics unique to Spyro

You know, you're not wrong about that, especially given that RAC is made by the same folks as Spyro. I will say there are a handful of mechanics unique to Spyro that I enjoyed (flight stages in particular), but if you haven't finished the RAC games yet, I'd say they're absolutely worth playing first. I loved A Hat in Time, but I'd definitely put it in a different sub-genre (or maybe sub-sub-genre) from Spyro. I feel like there's a divide between games where you go into a level to collect a thing, then the level is over (e.g. Mario 64) and games where you go into a level to collect ALL the things (e.g. Banjo Kazooie). The former tends to have a little more variety, as often the level will change in-between things.