What's the hype around Dream Team?

I don't understand why Dream Team is so beloved. Replaying it, I've noticed how many flaws the game has that really started to become apparent the more I played.

One of my bigger gripes is that the playtime feels artificially extended. It's by far the longest game in the series (beside Brothership), and I had so many moments where I felt like a large portion of my playtime was mashing through tutorial dialogue from Starlow or other NPCs. Previous M&L games did have tutorials that got a bit overbearing at times, but switching between Partners in Time and Dream Team really made it apparent on how many tutorials this game has. PiT explains abilities, yes, but after it does so, it tends to let you learn the other stuff you can do with them on your own.

Dream Team, on the other hand, feels like there's a tutorial for almost every new puzzle. I distinctly remember learning how to dig underground (which was a bit drawn out to begin with), then finding the flipping tile puzzle and having Starlow tell me exactly what to do without even giving me a chance to experiment. Then coming across another slightly more complicated tile flipping puzzle, and having Starlow come out again to explain it to me.

The game's overworld environments also weren't as interesting to me as many of the past games. I felt like I was going through the motions of "generic grass level, generic desert level, generic beach level". I enjoyed Mount Pajamaja the most, but didn't like most of the other areas.

The Dream World segments also felt uninteresting, and I found myself avoiding the pillows I found unless they were required to progress the story. A lot of the Luiginary transformations felt like I was just using a clunkier, harder to control version of the overworld ones.

I also felt that the game didn't feel like it had much of a sense of urgency. Sure, Peach got kidnapped, but that happens in every game. I feel like previous games felt like they had more of a sense of stakes, and I didn't really get the impression that the random citizens were even really inconvenienced by the events of the main plot. (Again, something I like about PiT is the feeling of the shroobs being pretty much everywhere, giving the impression of a full-scale invasion.)

I've got more issues with Dream Team, but that's all I'm going to say for now. Enjoy this weird rambling I guess.