Definitely not worth all the hate, but also a little too monotonous for it's own good. If you're familiar with collectathons as an idea then this will be a breeze for you, though the over-reliance on minigames and the general lack of difficulty/risk in the overall level design creeps up into making this hard to enjoy. The visuals are pretty insane though. Seeing lighting effects used and abused to liberally on an N64 game is awesome, and as always, the Rare sound team doesn't disappoint, though it's admittedly not near their strongest OST from the era.
This game is just pretty middling, but it's chill enough to have captivated me to complete it. Definitely worth a play if you wanna see what all the fuss is all about.