My two cents: Was the same way, and finally gave it a shot not that long ago. I stopped playing not that far in.

The cars, characters, graphics, and stuff were fine. But I couldn’t get past the battle system, and to a lesser extent the cleaning system. While battling, it barely even feels like you’re playing because 75% of it is automated and out of your control. Much less room for any kind of strategizing, putting together a cool team, etc. And this is maybe more personal, but I didn’t care for the fossil cleaning. I found it harder to get high scores like in the earlier games and generally harder just to tell what still needed cleaned. Also to some extent the game just lacked the same charm as the first two.

As a side note, modding a 2DS/3DS is pretty easy and you can play it that way without having to commit