Going by your mention of the Reptar and Babe Giga Pets, I assume that you're exclusively referring to the original 1990s Giga Pets, here? I ask because there was a recent revival under the name "GigaPetsAR", but those are based on different programming to the originals, so wouldn't fall under quite the same banner.
If so, then no, Giga Pets are completely different to the original Tamagotchis. They were notorious in their day for having difficult and unintuitive pet-raising rules, dying easily, and being extremely unreasonable for schoolkids to take care of. The licensed ones that were based on TV-shows, movies, and similar, are generally said to be a bit less problematic, but I still remember hearing complaints about those, too.
To the best of my knowledge, Giga Pets grow rather than evolving, so things like teaching them tricks are what varies up runs with these pets.
There are pages from the very old site
Virtual Pet Farm which back up how difficult the original Giga Pets are to care for. Those can be found here;
https://www.virtualpet.com/vp/farm/gigapet/gphealth/gphlet.htm
https://www.virtualpet.com/vp/farm/gigapet/gphealth/gphsug.htm
I never owned a Giga Pet myself, as trying out one owned by someone I knew back in the day put me off of buying one! That said, I gather that they might be a good choice if you're looking for a very different experience to a Tamagotchi, and especially if you're looking for something that's difficult to raise.