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Chao Garden Showcase
- Chao Garden Showcase
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Chao Garden Showcase
Tominique > 10-04-2024, 10:19 AM
The Chao Garden has always fascinated me as a feature in the Adventure games. How out of left field they are but how well they work with the main game once you really get into it. It's a genius cycle of playing stages to perfect them, then using the Chaos Drives, animals and rings you got during your runs to raise your Chao, then after you've spent it all you go back to the action stages to do it all over again. It's a self-sustaining cycles where action stages let you raise your Chao, and raising your Chao works as motivation to get better at the action stages! Crazy stuff!
And after spending a bit of time with my Chao in Sonic Adventure 2, I was wondering if anyone else had been raising the little guys. So I'm gonna show off my Garden first and the progress I've made on it.
I only have 4 Chao as of now.
![[Image: 7DzwJPq.png]](https://i.imgur.com/7DzwJPq.png)
This sleepyhead is Elvis, my first ever Chao from one of the eggs that come with the Neutral Garden. He's a Hero/PowerChao and I'm working up to make him a Hero/Power/Fly. He doesn't do much aside from sleeping and crying, but I love him regardless. Plus, I chose his name because it reminds me of a really good video.
![[Image: LJSVPZ6.png]](https://i.imgur.com/LJSVPZ6.png)
This one is Kosmo, from the other egg that came with the Neutral Garden. She's currently a Dark/Run Chao and I'm working up to making her a Dark/Run/Run for that cool Shadow the Hedgehog look. As you can see by the medal, she is my little champion, the main Chao I use for races and Karate. No mercy for the weak!
![[Image: 5yJ4xag.png]](https://i.imgur.com/5yJ4xag.png)
These last two I don't have much to say on. Chacky and Candy. They're from the eggs that come with the Dark Garden and the one that comes with the Hero Garden respectively. They're both still child Chao, and I'm working up for Chacky to become a Dark/Fly, and for Candy a Hero/Swim.
By the way. I can keep track of my Chao's stats and actually manage what type of Chao they become using Fusion's Chao Editor. As the name implies, it's a program that lets you edit basically everything about your Chao during gameplay (with the Steam version of Sonic Adventure 1/2, of course), like stats and appearence. Though I mainly just use it for keeping track of stats and choosing specific animal parts for my Chao.
Again, I find Chao to be such an oddity at how much they shouldn't work for a Sonic game, yet manage to take up more of my time than the main game itself. Even if you don't have a Garden, I'm curious on just thoughts about it because I find Chao and the sub-community around them super interesting. -
RE: Chao Garden Showcase
BDBGaming > 10-04-2024, 10:29 AM
I WISH I HAD MY 360 SO I COULD SHOW YALL AAAAA-
I have a fully dark chao, and a chao I'm turning hero!
They have funny names too, and the dark one looks like a fire chicken AAAAA_ -
RE: Chao Garden Showcase
sundrowned > 10-04-2024, 08:34 PM
oh man, the chao garden... i have yet to properly play around in it myself since i've been planning on replaying sa2 & i still havent got around to it. i raised a few chao to adulthood on my initial save, but the only one i can really remember is my dark chao, nix. and i only have a single screenshot saved from when it was still a baby.
![[Image: shadowchao.png]](https://file.garden/Zl0vzAzAvyz0wNPQ/shadowchao.png)
i thought about making it a dark/fly chao, but i ended up raising it to be a dark/run chao instead, because it was literally only proficient in run when i checked its stats. which is a pretty funny coincidence after i primarily raised it with shadow. -
RE: Chao Garden Showcase
Tominique > Yesterday, 06:02 AM
(10-04-2024, 08:34 PM)sundrowned Wrote: i thought about making it a dark/fly chao, but i ended up raising it to be a dark/run chao instead, because it was literally only proficient in run when i checked its stats. which is a pretty funny coincidence after i primarily raised it with shadow.
I'm assuming you did all that without any Editor of sorts to track your Chao's stats, which if so I can see why the undesired outcome, the system for what type a Chao grows up to be is kind of weird and not what you'd expect, and why Chao Island is an invaluable resource for when you want to get serious raising your Chao, and the aforementioned Chao Editor crucial for managing stats.
![[Image: BB2FSSJ.png]](https://i.imgur.com/BB2FSSJ.png)
The Editor visualizes it the best. This is Kosmo's stats, my Dark/Run Chao. As you can see, stats are on opposing scales to each other and will weigh more to a certain stat's scale if they are given Chaos Drives or animals of that specific stat type. Which means your Chao can have the higher Power stat overall, but if you give it a ton of Run Chaos Drives right after, the stat scale will weigh in more to Run and they will turn into that type Chao instead.
![[Image: zPnUB2a.png]](https://i.imgur.com/zPnUB2a.png)
Bonus thing. The Editor also lets you see your Chao's bond to other characters. This doesn't change much other than how they react to seeing and being picked up by other characters.
![[Image: BrzoKdC.png]](https://i.imgur.com/BrzoKdC.png)
IT ALSO MAKES IT SO THAT CHAO WILL WALK UP TO THE CHARACTER THEY LOVE THE MOST AND ASK FOR HEADPATS AND- AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHH!!! I LOVE THAT SO MUCH!!!!!!
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RE: Chao Garden Showcase
sundrowned > Yesterday, 08:17 AM
(Yesterday, 06:02 AM)Tominique Wrote: I'm assuming you did all that without any Editor of sorts to track your Chao's stats, which if so I can see why the undesired outcome, the system for what type a Chao grows up to be is kind of weird and not what you'd expect, and why Chao Island is an invaluable resource for when you want to get serious raising your Chao, and the aforementioned Chao Editor crucial for managing stats.
[Image: https://i.imgur.com/BB2FSSJ.png]
The Editor visualizes it the best. This is Kosmo's stats, my Dark/Run Chao. As you can see, stats are on opposing scales to each other and will weigh more to a certain stat's scale if they are given Chaos Drives or animals of that specific stat type. Which means your Chao can have the higher Power stat overall, but if you give it a ton of Run Chaos Drives right after, the stat scale will weigh in more to Run and they will turn into that type Chao instead.
yeah, in my first sa2 playthrough i didn't have access to any of the fancy chao garden tools like that. it's why i've been holding off on sinking a lot of time into the chao garden until i can play the steam version and really go all-out with the mods.
i do remember i actually had a second chao that i accidentally turned into a power chao because of a situation like you mentioned, where it had a pretty even stat spread overall, but i just happened to give it a lot of power drives all at once and that was enough for it to become that type. i think i was trying to make it a swim chao instead, but i couldn't give it enough drives to undo the power influence.
also funny enough, i didn't even know that character bonds were a mechanic when i was first playing around in the chao garden, but it's definitely one of my favorite features now for how adorable it is. i was pretty shocked when nix first started reacting with excitement when i picked it up with shadow, like in the screenshot. i didn't even know that would happen when i was raising it exclusively with shadow, i was just doing that on my own for the fun of it, because i like imagining that each chao belongs to a different character & raising them accordingly. -
RE: Chao Garden Showcase
Tominique > Yesterday, 08:40 AM
(Yesterday, 08:17 AM)sundrowned Wrote: also funny enough, i didn't even know that character bonds were a mechanic when i was first playing around in the chao garden, but it's definitely one of my favorite features now for how adorable it is. i was pretty shocked when nix first started reacting with excitement when i picked it up with shadow, like in the screenshot. i didn't even know that would happen when i was raising it exclusively with shadow, i was just doing that on my own for the fun of it, because i like imagining that each chao belongs to a different character & raising them accordingly.
Oh, I do the same thing with only raising a certain Chao with a specific character. Part of it light roleplaying, part of it so I encourage myself to play other characters' stages other than just farming City Escape for a bazillion years and raising every Chao with just Sonic.
Though I think the game does do a good job of incentivizing raising Chao with different characters. There's the alignment system that makes a Chao either Hero or Dark depending on what alignment the character you raise them with is, but certain animals are also only found in specific stages. So say you wanna give your Chao a Skeleton Dog and you play some Shadow stages to try and find one. You literally can't as none of Shadow's stages have a Skeleton Dog, but some of Eggman's do. And of course, you can get that info from Chao Island much like anything Chao-related.
