I've been looking at the Chao Garden's mechanics, and it turns out that the way they're executed in the Adventure games, they rely solely on grinding stages over and over again. Otherwise, the only things you can do with your Chao are pet them, pick them up, and give them the default fruit in the garden. If you want to do anything else, you have to clear stages with as many rings as possible for things in the shop, or you have to grind animals in the stages, especially amplified because you can only hold ten at a time.

You then give these animals to your Chao to mildly increase a few of their stats, all of this just to increase their stats. These stats are used for the races, but all these races really amount to is an arbitrary stat box requirement that's been glorified visually to look like racing. Really, you can win the races by reaching stat requirements, ultimately meaning you get the Emblems FROM the task of grinding animals until the game says "okay, it's fine, here's your Emblem now".

The rest of the stuff for the Chao Garden is purely cosmetic. The stuff they learn in the kindergarten, the stuff they put on their heads, the toys they play with, they're not really practical, but are there. I suppose if you get a kick out of seeing a Chao play a trumpet, riding a rocking horse, drawing a pizza, or something, then I suppose it can be fun. As for me, though, I'm typically a 100% completionist, which means that I'm aiming for all the Emblems, and grinding for things in the Chao Garden was extremely tedious, and that might've brought down my overall attachment to the Chao Garden.

You know what else is tedious? When your Chao sleeps. There's moments where you can't even give your Chao fruit or animals because they'll randomly just decide to go to sleep for like ten minutes. I suppose it's cute if you're just casually in the garden, but when I was trying to grind stats for the Emblems, I had to sit there. I could've woken it up, but then I run the risk of that Chao dying, and I might end up losing all the stats I've worked toward. So, I just had to wait. It's especially horrid when the Chao will suddenly decide "I'm going to reincarnate!", and there goes 90% of everything you've obtained. If you're just going for the Emblems, it's nothing but a kick in the nuts.

Also, I forgot to mention getting stamina stats. You can't get these from animals, so you have to give your Chao fruit. Well, there's plenty of times where Chao will NOT eat the fruit, and immediately spit it out. Why? What's even the point of this? If you're going for the Emblems, it just drags things out.

I will resume this later.