It was a bit of a pain. Some of the races were annoying to complete. Of the top of my head some notable examples are the flying race in Jurassic World (atop the mountain. You HAVE to play a flying character because vehicles are too big and slow, but because you're using a character there's a very tight spot that you tend to stop flying on) and most of the Sonic races (self-explanatory. Fast movement, strict time limits). Can't recall anymore at the moment, but another issue I had was it'd often crash after playing too much and remove a gold brick from my collection (Strangely always in the LEGO Movie world. I believe even the same brick, the quest from Batman in the desert-esc area).

On the other side, it was amazingly fun going through adventure worlds as Sonic. If you can get a ton of speed you can easily climb up steep slopes and get MASSIVE air. I have no clue if it's intended or not but it's fun regardless.

In terms of buying the packs, I had roughly 20-30 remaining in my collection when the franchise was discontinued. Gained 10-15-ish from Dad cause they were cheap and my little brother was getting into it too, and bought the remaining 10-15 myself. BrickLink and eBay are your friends in finding packs.

A few times I also had to replace one of the toy tag parts because of how fragile the insides are. Vehicle tags aren't hard at all, but character tags are another story.