Let's start with the most important thing. Ring Fit Adventure is a Great game.
Here's the story so far:
I've been pretty active person my entire life. I have played competitive sports and other sports from the age of 4. It's a big part of my life. But as it is I am now 38 years old. I have two little boys and life just gives you more things to do with the same time as before. I have developed what is flatteringly known as dadbod. There's definitely extra there, maybe 10-15 kilograms even if I can still outrun most people in orienteering route or play decent safety in american football.
I have been playing video games roughly two years less than I have done sports. For over thirty years I've played on every single major system. I have dabbled with VR and I played the heck out of Wii Sports Resorts and Wii Fit games. I've tried out other stuff as well, but as it is they are more of a curiosity than a game or actual workout.
Here is where the magic of Nintendo and 2019 come along. Ring Fit Adventure and I can't stress this enough is a great game and is a good workout.
I started to play the game on day 1. I've been playing every day for 30-45 minutes of active time, which translates roughly to 1-2 hours of gameplay every day. I do this most often when my kids are asleep either at night or during naps. Why do I keep playing it, when it practically makes me grow my backlog of Switch games in absolutely disgusting numbers. I have barely touched Luigis Mansion 3, I have played literally two hours of Pokémon (which is maybe a tenth of what I would have played the game ten years ago). I still haven't finished Astral Chain or Link's Awakening. It's a fantastic situation to be in as a gamer, but it's also a really weird situation.
I can play the games on my commute still, but at home it's been 99% Ring Fit Adventure. It's a weird situation. I have always been a pragmatic in my hobby. I played A LOT as a kid and before my own kids were born. We play Mario Maker 2 and some other games with them, but as it is, the hobby has been taking the backbench to other things in life. It's not a bad thing.
But now. I feel the urge to play every day. I want to play the game every single day. I want to open up the Switch and find a slot in my day to do that. Why? Because it feels good and it plays good. I know this is repeating the previous statement, but it's a line that has to be said over and over again. It's not GOTY material for obvious reasons but it's definitely GOTDB material.
Does it work?
It does.
I started to measure my progress simply by doing the minigames one every day, tracking my progress. I have in every single one of them raised my record at least one level (levels go from C- to S) There are clothes that fit me better. And I stress the following. I feel better.
I have in no other way changed my daily routines whatsoever. I eat absolutely the same, which is not the healthiest diet. I do eat enough fruit and veggies but there is way too much saturated fats and sugar in my diet, which is the main reason for my well-developed dadbod. I still have my regular training, football, floorball, orienteering and occasional other sports. What changes there have been, I attribute it to better sleep and Ring Fit Adventure and the former partly to the latter.
I play on intensity level 24/30 currently, which means I do approximately 26-30 reps on basic fitness moves on each attack. Doing 30 raised squats four to five times during an hour training with other moves is nothing to sniff at even if you play sports or are active otherwise. There are often times that I am literally drenched with sweat. There are multiple occasions where the challenges or requests have taken me Several attempts and there are situations where I actually had to resort changing in-game clothes or using other boosts to make it through them. Treadmill challenges are fantastic way to get yourself feel vulnerable.
Most of the game levels I play through with light heartbeat, around 110-120 range, with maybe one third going into 120-150 range and one tenth above that. I don't normally use cardio belts or other accessories, but I did for few days just to test my average heartbeat throughout the entire session. It was 118. It's a damn good average heartbeat for a session that took an hour and eight minutes. For a video game it's fantastic.
I continuosly try to improve my posture and the way I do the excercises. I try to listen to the tips and always rebalance myself for example in yoga postures when needed. The game is never being too harsh on the movements, but it also does give you enough instructions to do them well and properly.
There are enough excercises to make the game easier or tougher for yourself or simply to have a large variety of good moves for your entire body. There are some that are very easy for active people, but doing russian twists with your feet off the ground will kill you if you want to.
All in all it's a great workout if you commit to it. For someone who doesn't actively do sports or otherwise excercise this will work on a much more relaxed schedule than for me. The best part on the excercise side of it is that it will never ever berate you. It's the most positive feedback I have ever seen. It wants you to do things your way, how your body feels comfortable, how you want. And no excercise is ever going to be succesful unless it motivates you to do that.
Is it a good game? (THIS PART WILL CONTAIN SLIGHT SPOILERS)
It is. It absolutely is.
It has good gameplay, great reward loop and for not just as an excercise game but simply as a game it has surprising amount of depth.
You start the game with just the bare minimum of excercises as it walks you through the game mechanics. It gives you new things pretty regularly from the get go. You get new moves. You get new skills to travel the world and you get new minigames and challenges.
As you progress through the extremely campy story you unlock a skill tree, which will then be expanded later on into larger one. You get backtracking with requests on world. These vary from delivering smoothies to battles with certain conditions to playing through course using as few steps as possible jumping and gliding instead. There is a continuous reward loop that keeps you going for the next level. The game tends to tell you to take breaks more often than not, but it's really not more than any other Nintendo game when looking at the overall gameplay time.
The story is great. It's fun. It's witty. It's campy. It's extremely cliché, but it fits the game. Everyone you meet is a stereotype or an archetype. Best of all of these is of course the main antagonist, body building Dragon Dragaux, who wants to corrupt the land trying to regain his powers. There are plenty of running gags and there is a lot of references to games, stories, pop culture and other things.
The enemies are adorable antropomorfications of gym equipment. There are Kettlebells, Dumbells, helmets and drinking bottles along with excercise balls and such. They are charming and although their attack patterns could be better, there's enough variation for you to appreciate the visual difference.
Visuals altogether are fantastic. The world is vivid and the simplistic artstyle suits well with the input system and the straightforward progress within the levels. As you progress you will surely notice repetition within the levels and in some points it might be quite obvious. But then there are new levels and visuals that will delight you. World and the looks are complemented by great soundtrack. The production values within the game are phenomenal.
There's inventory of Smoothies that you can either buy or make from ingredients, squeezing the Ring Con accessory to make them. It's weird to do onion soup that way, but then again I am battling against Dragaux the bodybuilding dragon with mountain climbers and russian twists. Smoothies are items that can replenish your health, give you exp, material or combat boost. There have been very few completely useless ones and the more powerful ones you unlock are still varied from the earlier ones, making very few of them obsolete. Clothes give you static bonuses and there are set bonuses that can give you faster running speed or experience boost or attack boost against certain type of enemies. The clothes also serve as the main customisation means for the game.
There's the skill tree and skill progression, where you want to change your attacks and excercises accordingly. Even if you do the requests and are overleveled in the later worlds you still want to have those powerful attacks on hand, because there are still enemies that you have to work for if you want to beat them without resorting to cheating on your excercises. The game isn't particularly hard and you probably won't die after the first few worlds. Even if you do there are recovery items and such.
And then there's the things outside the main Adventure mode. You can do simple excercises from different muscle groups. You can customise your own sets. You can play the minigames and go for the high scores on online leaderboards. Or you can try to set records on quick excercises like front press. Those records can be shared as well.
One of the things that I wouldn't have thought that would capture my interest is that you can compare people born on the same year you have through every single excercise and movement in the game. I am currently standing at #1 on Tree Pose, Chair Pose and Sidesteps out of 1091 people my own age who have uploaded their results. There are moves that I am well below #500 (looking at you, regular squats) and even though I am high in jogging I am much much lower on dashes. People play the game differently and it's become a habit to check my stands every few days.
CONCLUSION:
I hit Level 100 yesterday.
From what I've heard there is 20 worlds in the game. I am now on level 12 and I have been trying to complete every world as much as it's been possible, doing requests and challenges. I am slightly overleveled but as I mentioned earlier there's still fair bit of challenge in different forms. There are some situations where the game throws curveballs at you and you still have to push it in order to advance.
They said before the game was released that there is a good 2-3 months to play if you play Adventure mode every day. I play it every day and comparing stats within my age group I am in the top few percent when it comes to excercise times. Im still just past half point of the adventure mode and I haven't done any other things except those singular excercises to track my possible physical progression.
People often try to compare games with "Bang for the Buck" system. Ring Fit Adventure will cost you slightly more than your regular game, but if you commit to it there is more bang to this game than most regular games ever offer. It's a deep if straightforward adventure RPG that offers light, fun and witty story along with diverse training and a lot of encouraging words.
It's one of my best video gaming purchases in the last ten years and I am excited to see what the rest of the adventure brings. I truly hope there is going to be DLC adventures and maybe even a tie-in with the good old Wii Fit Board that is still in one of our cupboards, just waiting for me to hit tree pose on it.
TL;DR
Ring fit Adventure is a great game that offers a lot of different excercises, modes and a fun lighthearted adventure. It's absolute blast to play and I would recommend it to anyone who has any interest in trying excercise games. This is bang for your buck and killer on your glutes.
Here's the story so far:
I've been pretty active person my entire life. I have played competitive sports and other sports from the age of 4. It's a big part of my life. But as it is I am now 38 years old. I have two little boys and life just gives you more things to do with the same time as before. I have developed what is flatteringly known as dadbod. There's definitely extra there, maybe 10-15 kilograms even if I can still outrun most people in orienteering route or play decent safety in american football.
I have been playing video games roughly two years less than I have done sports. For over thirty years I've played on every single major system. I have dabbled with VR and I played the heck out of Wii Sports Resorts and Wii Fit games. I've tried out other stuff as well, but as it is they are more of a curiosity than a game or actual workout.
Here is where the magic of Nintendo and 2019 come along. Ring Fit Adventure and I can't stress this enough is a great game and is a good workout.
I started to play the game on day 1. I've been playing every day for 30-45 minutes of active time, which translates roughly to 1-2 hours of gameplay every day. I do this most often when my kids are asleep either at night or during naps. Why do I keep playing it, when it practically makes me grow my backlog of Switch games in absolutely disgusting numbers. I have barely touched Luigis Mansion 3, I have played literally two hours of Pokémon (which is maybe a tenth of what I would have played the game ten years ago). I still haven't finished Astral Chain or Link's Awakening. It's a fantastic situation to be in as a gamer, but it's also a really weird situation.
I can play the games on my commute still, but at home it's been 99% Ring Fit Adventure. It's a weird situation. I have always been a pragmatic in my hobby. I played A LOT as a kid and before my own kids were born. We play Mario Maker 2 and some other games with them, but as it is, the hobby has been taking the backbench to other things in life. It's not a bad thing.
But now. I feel the urge to play every day. I want to play the game every single day. I want to open up the Switch and find a slot in my day to do that. Why? Because it feels good and it plays good. I know this is repeating the previous statement, but it's a line that has to be said over and over again. It's not GOTY material for obvious reasons but it's definitely GOTDB material.
Does it work?
It does.
I started to measure my progress simply by doing the minigames one every day, tracking my progress. I have in every single one of them raised my record at least one level (levels go from C- to S) There are clothes that fit me better. And I stress the following. I feel better.
I have in no other way changed my daily routines whatsoever. I eat absolutely the same, which is not the healthiest diet. I do eat enough fruit and veggies but there is way too much saturated fats and sugar in my diet, which is the main reason for my well-developed dadbod. I still have my regular training, football, floorball, orienteering and occasional other sports. What changes there have been, I attribute it to better sleep and Ring Fit Adventure and the former partly to the latter.
I play on intensity level 24/30 currently, which means I do approximately 26-30 reps on basic fitness moves on each attack. Doing 30 raised squats four to five times during an hour training with other moves is nothing to sniff at even if you play sports or are active otherwise. There are often times that I am literally drenched with sweat. There are multiple occasions where the challenges or requests have taken me Several attempts and there are situations where I actually had to resort changing in-game clothes or using other boosts to make it through them. Treadmill challenges are fantastic way to get yourself feel vulnerable.
Most of the game levels I play through with light heartbeat, around 110-120 range, with maybe one third going into 120-150 range and one tenth above that. I don't normally use cardio belts or other accessories, but I did for few days just to test my average heartbeat throughout the entire session. It was 118. It's a damn good average heartbeat for a session that took an hour and eight minutes. For a video game it's fantastic.
I continuosly try to improve my posture and the way I do the excercises. I try to listen to the tips and always rebalance myself for example in yoga postures when needed. The game is never being too harsh on the movements, but it also does give you enough instructions to do them well and properly.
There are enough excercises to make the game easier or tougher for yourself or simply to have a large variety of good moves for your entire body. There are some that are very easy for active people, but doing russian twists with your feet off the ground will kill you if you want to.
All in all it's a great workout if you commit to it. For someone who doesn't actively do sports or otherwise excercise this will work on a much more relaxed schedule than for me. The best part on the excercise side of it is that it will never ever berate you. It's the most positive feedback I have ever seen. It wants you to do things your way, how your body feels comfortable, how you want. And no excercise is ever going to be succesful unless it motivates you to do that.
Is it a good game? (THIS PART WILL CONTAIN SLIGHT SPOILERS)
It is. It absolutely is.
It has good gameplay, great reward loop and for not just as an excercise game but simply as a game it has surprising amount of depth.
You start the game with just the bare minimum of excercises as it walks you through the game mechanics. It gives you new things pretty regularly from the get go. You get new moves. You get new skills to travel the world and you get new minigames and challenges.
As you progress through the extremely campy story you unlock a skill tree, which will then be expanded later on into larger one. You get backtracking with requests on world. These vary from delivering smoothies to battles with certain conditions to playing through course using as few steps as possible jumping and gliding instead. There is a continuous reward loop that keeps you going for the next level. The game tends to tell you to take breaks more often than not, but it's really not more than any other Nintendo game when looking at the overall gameplay time.
The story is great. It's fun. It's witty. It's campy. It's extremely cliché, but it fits the game. Everyone you meet is a stereotype or an archetype. Best of all of these is of course the main antagonist, body building Dragon Dragaux, who wants to corrupt the land trying to regain his powers. There are plenty of running gags and there is a lot of references to games, stories, pop culture and other things.
The enemies are adorable antropomorfications of gym equipment. There are Kettlebells, Dumbells, helmets and drinking bottles along with excercise balls and such. They are charming and although their attack patterns could be better, there's enough variation for you to appreciate the visual difference.
Visuals altogether are fantastic. The world is vivid and the simplistic artstyle suits well with the input system and the straightforward progress within the levels. As you progress you will surely notice repetition within the levels and in some points it might be quite obvious. But then there are new levels and visuals that will delight you. World and the looks are complemented by great soundtrack. The production values within the game are phenomenal.
There's inventory of Smoothies that you can either buy or make from ingredients, squeezing the Ring Con accessory to make them. It's weird to do onion soup that way, but then again I am battling against Dragaux the bodybuilding dragon with mountain climbers and russian twists. Smoothies are items that can replenish your health, give you exp, material or combat boost. There have been very few completely useless ones and the more powerful ones you unlock are still varied from the earlier ones, making very few of them obsolete. Clothes give you static bonuses and there are set bonuses that can give you faster running speed or experience boost or attack boost against certain type of enemies. The clothes also serve as the main customisation means for the game.
There's the skill tree and skill progression, where you want to change your attacks and excercises accordingly. Even if you do the requests and are overleveled in the later worlds you still want to have those powerful attacks on hand, because there are still enemies that you have to work for if you want to beat them without resorting to cheating on your excercises. The game isn't particularly hard and you probably won't die after the first few worlds. Even if you do there are recovery items and such.
And then there's the things outside the main Adventure mode. You can do simple excercises from different muscle groups. You can customise your own sets. You can play the minigames and go for the high scores on online leaderboards. Or you can try to set records on quick excercises like front press. Those records can be shared as well.
One of the things that I wouldn't have thought that would capture my interest is that you can compare people born on the same year you have through every single excercise and movement in the game. I am currently standing at #1 on Tree Pose, Chair Pose and Sidesteps out of 1091 people my own age who have uploaded their results. There are moves that I am well below #500 (looking at you, regular squats) and even though I am high in jogging I am much much lower on dashes. People play the game differently and it's become a habit to check my stands every few days.
CONCLUSION:
I hit Level 100 yesterday.
From what I've heard there is 20 worlds in the game. I am now on level 12 and I have been trying to complete every world as much as it's been possible, doing requests and challenges. I am slightly overleveled but as I mentioned earlier there's still fair bit of challenge in different forms. There are some situations where the game throws curveballs at you and you still have to push it in order to advance.
They said before the game was released that there is a good 2-3 months to play if you play Adventure mode every day. I play it every day and comparing stats within my age group I am in the top few percent when it comes to excercise times. Im still just past half point of the adventure mode and I haven't done any other things except those singular excercises to track my possible physical progression.
People often try to compare games with "Bang for the Buck" system. Ring Fit Adventure will cost you slightly more than your regular game, but if you commit to it there is more bang to this game than most regular games ever offer. It's a deep if straightforward adventure RPG that offers light, fun and witty story along with diverse training and a lot of encouraging words.
It's one of my best video gaming purchases in the last ten years and I am excited to see what the rest of the adventure brings. I truly hope there is going to be DLC adventures and maybe even a tie-in with the good old Wii Fit Board that is still in one of our cupboards, just waiting for me to hit tree pose on it.
TL;DR
Ring fit Adventure is a great game that offers a lot of different excercises, modes and a fun lighthearted adventure. It's absolute blast to play and I would recommend it to anyone who has any interest in trying excercise games. This is bang for your buck and killer on your glutes.
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