Ring Fit Adventure Review: A Lockdown Gem
- jiggy J-J
- Apr 2, 2021
- 9 min read
"Five More...Three...One Left...Amazing!"
Overview
A natural extension of the Wii Fit, Ring-Fit Adventure takes the concept of indoor exercise to its limit by providing an incredibly intense, but ultimately tailored experience to all who try it.
With the corrupt Dragaux intent on infecting the world with his dark influence, you unite with the plucky, exercise-focused, Ring on a fitness crusade that takes you across the land, meeting a cast of like-minded fitness nuts…your goal is to get fit. Because Ring Fit Adventure is a workout/fitness role playing game, the core gameplay revolves around exercise and tests your fitness to the degree you want. Whether that be a moderate exercise designed to maintain your fitness, or a dedicated exercise regime that will bolster your fitness to the max. It uses its sophisticated hardware to understand exactly what level of fitness the player has and provides a challenge to those who try it. Exercising feels great, and the leg strap and Joycon don’t feel like pointless add-ons to exercises but are functionally useful and ergonomically satisfying, to the point that their use feels necessary, even if it may not always be. Despite having some drawbacks, such as the weak calibration of the Joycons in certain exercises, and the sometimes-monotonous level design, Ring-Fit manages to maintain the hyper-enthusiasm of its mascot well. The vast choice of Fit-Skills, the challenge offered to even high-fitness players, and the effective tailoring to player level and customisability in any of the game’s modes of play, make Ring-Fit feel quite exceptional. It delivers on its promise to provide an enjoyable and challenging workout from your home. Although Ring Fit was unavailable due to stock shortages for a large part of its life cycle, it is back in stock in most retailers and back in December I managed to grab my copy. So, what’s left to do other than whack on a pair of leggings, wrap that leg strap round your thigh and slide those Joycons into place, because Ring-Fit Adventure is one of Nintendo’s best products.
Ring Fit...Adventure: Gameplay
Ring Fit's Adventure mode is a workout/fitness role playing game. As such, the core gameplay revolves around exercise and pushes your fitness to whatever degree you want. Whether that be a moderate exercise designed to maintain your current state, or a dedicated exercise regime that will bolster your fitness to the max, is up to you.
After designing your character, you awaken in an unfamiliar land, greeted by a circular device that is locked but is somehow calling your name. Reacting to its calls for help, you unknowingly release Dragaux, who, with his dark influence and hyper-fit body seeks to spread devastation across the land. The in-game Ring-Con, aptly named, Ring, asks for your aid in helping restore the land to peace by honing your fitness to take on Dragaux and alleviate him of the dark influence he seems to be under. The story is not exactly thrilling, but it serves its functional purpose of providing the player with a goal and at least some justification to the excessive dedication to fitness. As you travel from world to world, you complete different stages, take on different quests and clear out enemies before defeating either Dragaux or a member of his dark influence crew. Along the journey, you meet a whimsical cast of like-minded fitness nuts who seek to help you become a fitness God and take on Dragaux. Again, the story isn’t particularly engaging, but as you hone your skills, it is amusing to see what excuse Nintendo conjures up to bring Dragaux back after defeating him for the umpteenth time.
In terms of gameplay, moving through each stage requires you to run in place and stages will consist of Fit-Battles against single or grouped enemies. It is in these battles where Ring-Fit really tests your fitness, as you choose from a variety of pre-selected Fit-Skills (exercises) to defeat the multicoloured, fitness-themed enemies (if you were afraid this game wouldn’t be filled with punny fitness names, well I’m here to reassure you, it most definitely is). Each stage will indicate roughly how much time is required to complete it, the number of calories you’ll burn and the distance you’ll run. This is the same for all types of stages: field, battle gym and boss battles. Everything about Ring-Fit is designed to keep the player informed and aware of their exercise to support them in their workout. This is even supported by a post-stage optional heart rate check using the Joycons’ infrared scanner, the first time I’ve seen the Joycons used in such an innovative way, and post-exercise workout boards that detail your precise time spent doing each exercise and the benefits gained from your workout. To augment this, the game provides you with a dynamic stretch warmup and a (slightly) tailored post-workout static stretch cooldown, which it reminds you is key to maintaining good physical health.
The all-important Fit-Skills are categorised into four types: arms, stomach, legs and yoga, with each possessing a unique colour. Each Fit-Skill has a recharge-time, attack rating and range indicator, and also tells you which areas of the body each skill focuses on. The stomach exercise, Pendulum Bend, for example, has a recharge time of 2 turns, attacks for 130, will hit up to three side-by-side enemies and will work your waist, lower body and core. The legs skill, Mountain Climber, on the other hand, has a recharge time of 3 turns, attacks for 120, will hit all enemies and works the legs, upper arms and glutes. Before entering a level, you can assign which Fit-Skills you want to use. When executing them in battle, Fit-Skills require you to do a certain number of controlled reps, then fewer reps at an increased pace (all depending on the difficulty level set). Skills with dynamic motions will also be set in time with the current track that is playing, which will usually be an upbeat electro-pop tune to get the energy feeling like a high-intensity Zumba class. Sometimes you’ll get a slow track come on and in these instances, I’d recommend against these dynamic stretches as it can feel too slow and the Joycons often go out of sync with the motion, making the exercise ineffective. On every Fit-Skill, trainer Tipp will provide an instructional loop on how to perform each action, while Ring gives you handy insights into how to make your hair and body parts blaze, granting the most out of the exercise and maximising your damage output. To begin with you are limited to only a few Fit-Skills and slots, but these expand alongside your health, attack and defence as you level-up and unlock new skill tree options. The setup in battle is a fantastic way to ensure variety of exercise, as the recharge time prevents you from abusing one exercise, and different skills benefit you against different enemies: there’s also a shuffle button to filter through skills randomly. Combining this with the constant running and challenges in each level, or simply burning through exercise after exercise in the boss-battles, will be sure to give you a fierce workout.
Helpful tips throughout the workout and in the “tip of the day” post-workout rundown offer genuinely insightful information on things such as the benefits of exercise and healthy eating, the value of different nutrients and the importance of breathing during exercise. Sometimes you’ll even get a cheeky post-workout quiz! The game also does well to measure only the time you spend engaged solely in exercise, ensuring you’re not getting a false idea about the quality and duration of your workout session. What’s somewhat annoying is that for every minute of actual exercise time, there will be roughly a minute of time spent navigating menus, choosing options and listening to speech or short cutscenes - you should expect that half an hour of real-exercise time will equate to roughly an hour of playtime. Though, this is mostly in the adventure mode and you can look at it from the perspective that the extra time would be the equivalent of travelling to and from the gym.
Get Fit Your Way
Ring-Fit Adventure can be tough, and it will quickly dismiss any naysayers who may think a video game can’t be akin to a “real” workout. Ring’s infectious praise and encouragement will motivate all players and remind them that any exercise provides something gained.
Nintendo have done an excellent job at tailoring the game to individual fitness levels. Immediately upon beginning a new character’s adventure, the game performs a fitness check testing your strength, endurance and speed which determines the difficulty setting for the adventure. In my experience, I’ve found the difficulty setting to be highly accurate for fitness levels. Yet if you feel in any capacity that it’s not set correctly for your workout, if you want a tougher or more relaxed difficulty you are able and often encouraged to at any time alter the difficulty. Doing so will add more reps to your exercises and will slightly alter some in-level challenges. The game’s RPG elements also provide options to tone the difficulty through gear and smoothies, which can be bought in shops or crafted in a fun smoothie-press minigame to provide stat boosting effects and/or Fit-Skill alterations. As a reward for your hard work, you’re able to show off your achievements to your friends. My biggest milestone so far has been hitting 5000 standing twist reps and becoming an “incredible standing twister”. I could also show off my equally silly title, “busking stepper”, instead!
Ring-Fit Adventure’s biggest strength is its tailoring to different fitness levels and playstyles, allowing multiple users to create different profiles. If the adventure mode requires too much time or simply isn’t doing it for you, the game presents you with a multitude of ways to create a custom workout through its Quick Play option, which provides you with simple single-part challenges, short jogging-only levels, difficult region-specific workout sets, or a selection of 12 minigames. Some of my favourite minigames include Core Crushing, Smack Back and Squattery Wheel, where you’ll be whacking enemies and smacking projectiles with your rock-hard abs and replicating pottery designs with your precise and controlled squats. If what Nintendo has selected for you doesn’t match how you want to exercise or the areas you want to work on, the Custom function allows you to compile up to 20 of your own sets using any of the previously discussed exercises, workouts or jogging routes. As if that weren’t enough, Nintendo have even thrown in a rhythm action game where you hit certain notes on beat with ring presses and sharp movements, and a Multitask Mode, in which the Switch will count your Ring-Con presses and stretches while in sleep mode. Nintendo have also gone a long way to provide accessibility options with a host of assist modes that can be activated if you struggle with a certain exercise or if an injury prevents you from being able to do a Fit-Skill. The vibration on the Joycons also means those who may be blind and/or hard of hearing can complete exercises through simply feel, while Silent Mode can remove and replace the default running motion with squatting. All this amounts to clear intent by Nintendo to provide options to the player. Nintendo ensures that every level of fitness be able to play the game their pace, their way.
Where the game falls slightly short is in its adventure mode, which, despite providing a vast array of exercise options, can get monotonous because of stale and repetitive course designs. There are quite a few levels, but you’ll largely be coming across the same course under a different weather pattern or be experiencing very similar courses multiple times in a single world. This may make thematic sense in a series like Mario, where each world has a distinct style and tone, but in a fitness game like Ring-Fit, it may have made more sense to craft more varied stages both within and across worlds to sustain variation and better motivate the player. This also isn’t helped by the fact that new mechanics aren’t introduced in levels for what feels like a long time; running may be a passing exercise between battles, but it would be nice to have more variation, like the squats and climbing in later levels, introduced earlier and to a greater degree.
Final Thoughts
I’m not sure that I’ve had an experience quite like Ring-Fit. Contrary to its clear similarities with exercise games and the Wii Fit, I’m more inclined to say that the experience reminded me of playing a Pokémon game. Strolling down a linear route listening to a catchy tune before entering a high-intensity wild battle with a roster of skills had me reminiscing about my days of Pokémon FireRed. The cell shaded visual style also lent into this as, despite its simplicity, it created moments of grandeur and beauty where I could feel like I was strolling down Route 2 or Viridian Forest, eager to get into the next battle.
Developing from the Wii Fit's legacy, Ring Fit has exceeded my expectations for the possibility of fitness gaming. Nintendo has continued their creativity and innovation through what is an incredibly well made and functional piece of technology. The superb emphasis on customisation and what feels like a player-driven mentality is contrary to what Nintendo has seemed to be practising of late (especially with their game pricing and releases), and it is a welcome surprise. Although Ring-Fit Adventure lacks any interesting story, it serves its purpose as context for the brilliantly designed gameplay system. The leg-strap and Ring-Con feel genuinely well made, and the calibration accuracy (bar a few instances) and niche functions like the heart rate monitor makes the product feel high quality. Nintendo are embracing that quality matters, something I feel they’ve been realising ever since the somewhat shoddy craftsmanship of the Wii U. The initial price point may be steep, but I hope that doesn't drive people away. My pandemic experience has been genuinely improved by this product; as my running diminished in the winter months, and gym access was limited, I replaced them with a fantastic piece of kit that has more than fulfilled my exercising needs. With a total exercise time of over 40 hours, more than 9000 calories burned, and over 55 miles travelled, I've only just finished Adventure Mode. When Tipp asks me, "why not take a break?", my only response is...
Exercise never stops!
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