Ring Fit Adventure - Review: Buff Dragons and Sentient Pilates Rings... What More do you Need?

4.5 stars

The latest in a long-running list of Nintendo’s whacky peripheral ideas: Ring Fit Adventure, fight demons whilst doing pilates. Last month Nintendo announced the game seemingly out of nowhere. The premise is odd, attach a joy-con to your left leg via a strap and attach another to the top of a Nintendo-made, plastic pilates ring dubbed the ring-con. The joy-con’s inbuilt gyroscopes can measure (to a surprisingly high precision) the movement of your upper and lower body. The game uses this premise and pushes it to its max with multiple immersive game modes and a jarringly intense workout to boot!

When I first popped in the game, I was given very detailed instructions on how to attach the equipment and how to follow the in-game prompts. You control the menu by spinning and turning the ring-con which is very intuitive. Before playing the main story, I attempted to storm through all the mini-games. There is a wide variety of mini-games which target almost every muscle group. While playing the mini-games there is an on-screen guide, called Tipp, which shows you the correct way to do the exercise without injuring yourself. This self-care theme is very prevalent in the game. Nintendo knows that a large portion of their fanbase doesn’t necessarily know a lot about fitness; there are always tips on how to eat, how to do the exercise and constant reminders to stay hydrated. Given that I had to play an average of 4 hours per day to complete this review, the water reminders were a godsend.

Other than minigames you also have the option to do challenges, where you do one basic exercise such as pulling or squeezing the ring-con as many times as possible in 20 seconds. You can compare your scores with friends and is very enjoyable when you don’t have enough time for a full work-out. If you have even LESS time, there is a great option to play while doing something else… In my ‘breaks’ I watched Netflix while squeezing the ring against my shoulder. After an episode or seven of The Good Place, I turn the game back on and behold it measured all of my squeezes, telling me how many calories I burned and giving me a job well done!

Where the game shines though, is in its story mode. You jump in with a short opening sequence that sets up the story: The evil Dragaux (a super buff dragon with gains for days) gets released from a ring and goes on to wreak havoc in the neighbouring villages. The ring turns out to be a sentient being, aptly named Ring, and together with him, you have to track Draguax down and defeat him! Not the most imaginative story but for a fitness game I will allow it. The gameplay involves jogging on the spot to run forward, doing knee-lifts to climb up stairs and squeezing or pulling Ring to shot or suck in air to collect coins. These coins can be spent on clothing for the avatar character. There is a wide variety of options, a welcome addition given the very poor initial character customisation.

Running on the spot effectively means that the game is very linear, with only a couple paths you can take in each level (almost like a 2.5D platformer).

However, the main reason that this game goes beyond your typical RPG is the combat sequences. At some point, you will run into white glowing enemies, which will start the fight. The monsters are hilarious re-imaging of exercise equipment, such as a crab-like dumbbell or anthropomorphic kettlebell. You fight in typical RPG style, with various offensive moves doing different amounts of damaging and targeting 1-5 enemies. The unique aspect is that each move is an exercise. I never thought I would be doing 26 squats to take the basic enemy down to half health but here we are. Each exercise is grouped into 1 of 4 types: Core, Arms, Legs and Yoga. Once you get past the 2nd world even more strategy opens up where certain types of moves hurt certain monsters more. This cleverly opens up a way of making you do a whole body work out if you want to progress through the levels. I found myself switching from an under-arm press to chair-pose to knee-lifts just so I could survive a fight against 3 different monsters.

I am yet to finish the game but at the moment I am loving it. The peripherals are so precise that sometimes I forgot I was even exercising. I guess that is the true mark of a great fitness game. Possibly the best part of Ring Fit Adventure is its massive amount of difficulty variation. It asks you your sex, height, weight, fitness level and how difficult you want the game to be and makes, from what I can tell, a bespoke difficulty level that changes each exercises rep count as well as resistance. This is great as it makes sure that you are always pushing yourself as far as you want. Whether you are a complete novice or a fitness pro you will find benefit from this game, it even measures your calories and heart rate at the end of each level to let you know how hard you have been working!

If it is not clear already: I loved this game. If you are interested in getting fit but love video games too much, this is truly an excellent middle ground, with humorous characters, great music, limitless replayability and a good workout to boot! If you were put off by Wii Fit, fret not. This beats Wii Fit by miles and I thought very highly of it. For what it was trying to achieve, Ring Fit Adventure excels in every aspect.