I'd say making the players attacks hit box bigger is a good way to do it. It was hard to land hits even when I was directly on him ^-^
I will see what I can do! Originally I planned to introduce an alternate item/weapon where you throw the hat instead of swing it, but I never got to implementing, specifically for cases like this where it can bring you into the danger zone to hit them. However, I can definitely look at increasing the distance out of the hat swing. And then possibly implementing the hat boomerang idea, too.
Thanks again! :)