I'm fortunate enough to own it. I'm not much of a fan of racing games but CR can be fun, it's a sweet little game. The story mode is in a pop-up book style, it does have a pretty strong childish elements about it but some kiddies games have a high level of playability so thats not always a bad thing.
There are several modes such as Vs and Story mode that you can select and each character has his or her own special ability (for example Chocobo has the Dash ability and Bahamut has Mega Flare as mentioned above). As you play through you get to unlock more and more characters and there are also a few hidden options you can unlock.
As for spells, they can be collected around the tracks and used to attack other racers to help you gain the advantage - if you collect more than one of the same spell (goes up to three) you can fire a powered up verson of that spell.
I think one of the things I most apriciated about Chocobo Racing was the music, the music is almost all from various Final Fantasies and has been..remixed I suppose but the tracks sound pretty much how they used to only in better quality.