This has been an analysis long in the making… I’ve mentioned before that I never analyze a game unless I’ve beaten it. Well, it took me just over two years to beat this behemoth. I started playing December 25th, 2019. I beat the game December 31, 2021. This was without question my greatest gaming accomplishment ever. Forget being the best at mashing buttons, this game pushed me so much further than any other game could. Because it forced me to perform physical tasks. To exercise. A game unlike any other. It was my greatest challenge. And something that for once, I can legitimately be proud of accomplishing.
Now, for those of you who do not know me well, or at all (hello random reader who somehow stumbled upon these ramblings or potential interviewer), exercise and physical activity are extremely difficult for me. I have a ludicrous number of health issues that make even the simplest of tasks (such as walking for more than five minutes) extremely difficult and painful. I’ll not be going into all of those here (although I may mention some in the course of this analysis), suffice it to say, this game was far more challenging for me than the average player. As such, my experience was wholly unique. Although, as unique as this gaming experience is, I’m not entirely sure you could define a “standard” experience for it.
So, as I’ve said, it took me two years to finish this game. And because of that, writing this analysis will be a bit of a challenge. Normally, when playing a game I intend to analyze, I write down notes as I’m playing to remind me of talking points I wish to address in the analysis. I certainly have done that here. But I’ve never had to work off notes that are now years old at this point. So… with that in mind, bear with me as I attempt to discuss this most unique of gaming experiences.
For those not aware, Ring Fit Adventure (RFA) is an exercise game that uses a “Pilates ring” style of controller along with a leg strap (each using one of the two Joycon controllers) to measure different exercises, all the while mixing in action RPG elements to gamify the workout experience.
Upon starting the game for the first time, the game will ask the player many questions. This is done to determine who you are and what you may be able to handle in regards to a workout routine. Age, weight, gender, previous workout experience, et cetera. It will then test your abilities by having you push and pull on the “ringcon” controller to determine your starting base strength limits.
Through this questionnaire and stress test a starting workout difficulty is selected for you (difficulty numbers range from one to thirty, thirty being the maximum difficulty). Workout difficulty can be adjusted at any time, but I found the number it started out for me to be quite appropriate. I felt like the game was pushing me, but not past my own personal limits. And as I grew more comfortable, I increased it appropriately. In fact the game will often ask you if you want to change the difficulty, even when you’ve reached max difficulty and have stayed at max for some time… it gets very annoying…
A brief note on the questionnaire, some might have noticed it asks rather personal questions such as weight. And that may trigger a red flag to some, particularly those who played the old Wii Fit games. I never had any interest in those so I cannot speak from personal experience. But I have often heard that those failed games did very little to help people exercise or get into shape, and mostly just “fat shamed” the players, focusing constantly on how much they weighed and how little they succeeded in losing weight. In RFA, once you input your weight in that first questionnaire, you will never hear the subject of weight again. That will be it. End of story. The game is not interested in how much you weigh. It isn’t even interested in weight loss. It is only interested in helping you achieve a healthier and more active, or “fit,” lifestyle. It seeks to be nothing but a positive influence in your life. Sometimes even a little too positive… That Ring… he obsesses over “shiny and beautiful” sweat a little too much if you ask me… But I digress, let’s get on with this.
When I first wrote these notes, there were four different modes of play. But through the magic of updates, there are now five: Adventure, Quick Play, Custom, Multitask, and Rhytym. I will be focusing the majority of this analysis on Adventure mode, as that is where you’ll find the real meat of the game. Later on I will briefly go over the rest.
Adventure mode is a massive game mode in which you take control of a protagonist known as the Ring Fit Trainee (in which you name it whatever you want). You can choose between male or female avatars, and you can select the skin color, but that’s about it. The game is not very interested in your character’s looks, ironically enough… Upon deciding these unimportant things, you are thrust into the story of a young trainee who comes across a strange ring covered in bonds. The ring speaks to you, asking you to free it.
With a little pushing and pulling, you free the creature trapped within the ring, only to realize that it is Dragaux. An extremely muscular dragon, set on covering the world with his dark influence and becoming the strongest creature in the world. While Dragaux runs off, the real Ring comes to life, explaining that he had trapped Dragaux to keep him from doing what you just allowed him to do. Ring was once Dragaux’s training partner, but Dragaux had become obsessed with getting stronger and stronger, eventually his obsessions took over, and the dark influence consumed him. Well, now its up to you, Trainee, and your magical talking exercise Ring, to stop the dragon and save the world. Through exercise!
I should note that before even starting Adventure mode, or any subsequent Adventure mode session, the game will have you perform a set of dynamic stretches. These four stretches will be the same every single time you play. Designed to loosen you up before any workout, the stretches aim to work every portion of your body, so you will be ready for anything.
When first starting out, the game brings you in at a very gradual pace. The first level doesn’t even have enemies. Instead, it focuses on teaching (by doing) how a given level will play out. To me, it at first felt very much like a “forced runner” game. You are set on a path, and you must run through it (by literally running in place [the leg strap + left joycon monitors all running, walking, and other leg movements]). You cannot move backwards, nor can you veer off the path. Exploration is not the name of this game. Of course, if moving through levels was only done through running, it’d get a little dull, so, rest assured, in later levels you will be required to do all sorts of other exercises. Jumping through the air by way of squat launch boards, riding on squat swings, jumping on squat trampolines, knee lifts to climb stairs, overhead pull ziplines, abdominal press kayaking and flying (more on that in a bit), overhead bend skateboarding, and so on. In short (too late), there will be a lot of different exercise specific (many squat related…) methods of movement besides simply running. But you will always be moving forward. Granted sometimes paths branch (for example an upper path or a lower path, still both moving forward), but I’ll touch on that more in a bit, too.
There is more to a level than simply running, though, of course. There are often obstacles on the path or collectibles on the sides of the path, to break up the monotony and make things a little more interesting, even in the enemy-less first level. Sometimes there will be doors in your way, or crates on the side of the road. For obstacles such as these, you would need to use an “air blast” to blow the doors open or to break open the crates. When performing the latter, you will often be rewarded with money or other in game items. To perform an air blast, you simply need to press in on the ringcon. The more force and speed you press in with, the more powerful and far reaching your air blast will be.
Alternatively, you may see money or items simply strewn about on the sides of the pathway you’re running along. In these cases, you’ll want to “pull” them in to you by performing a pull on the ringcon, creating a vacuum effect.
I appreciated these little additions, but I was often annoyed when I missed one (particularly the bonus XP tokens). Mainly because, as I said before, there is no going backward. And there are a number of things that could distract me from seeing these little pickups at any given time. For one, Ring likes to yammer. A lot. Much like your copilots in StarFox. This is distracting, because of where the text is being shown on the screen. Much like it was when I was playing Super Mario Odyssey and Cappy decided to start yammering.
Another distraction is the player character itself. When you do the exercises well, your hair turns into a long pony tail of fire to indicate you’re doing the exercise properly. But that hair fire covers up a large chunk of screen, making it very difficult to see what’s coming ahead. Besides which, it just looks plain stupid… particularly on the male Trainee (who has short hair, not a ponytail), whom I played… It’s clear who the target audience was for this game. I wasn’t it. But enough of that.
Starting with the second level, enemies will start appearing. Enemies show up on the linear paths of levels, looking like floating white ghost balls with faces. When you run into these balls, you will be sent to a RPG turn based combat style of a fight. All of your attacks are performed by doing various exercises. At first, your attack repertoire will be quite limited, ring pushes, squats, etc., but your options will grow a lot over time. The attack power of the move is determined by how well you perform the exercise. If you do well, again your hair will catch fire, but also the muscle group you’re currently working will glow a reddish orange on the trainee. This was useful to me to know where I should be “feeling the burn” to know that I was indeed doing the move correctly. It’s also worth noting that an attack is not simply one exercise and you’re done. It is instead a series of reps. Ten to thirty-ish (at start) attacks that do very little damage individually, but a good chunk when totaled together.
All moves, when performed have a cooldown period, as well, so that you cannot simply spam one attack over and over. I appreciated this, as it encouraged me to constantly change up which part of my body I was working, ensuring an even workout overall.
I had forgotten about this, but although it is not available at the start, eventually you will unlock a special power that will make certain moves more effective against certain enemies. Essentially, everything is color coded. Enemies and exercises. Red = arms, blue = legs, yellow = abs, and green = yoga. So, if you were to do a squat move on a blue enemy, you would deal more damage than you would if you had chosen to perform a yoga pose move. There are also black enemies, and for them, there will never be a bonus, you just have to stick it out and perform your best.
Of course, enemies will have their turn to attack as well. With the rare exception of a few enemy types (who might buff, debuff, heal etc.) and boss encounters, most enemy attacks will be fended off with abdominal presses. Turning the ringcon sideways, you press it into your abdomen, and hold it for the duration of the enemy attack. If successful, you will take less (or no) damage.
As you may have noticed from the image above, the game will always show you how to do the given exercise. Always. Not to mention Ring will often spout tips to make sure you’re doing it properly. More than just ensure maximum damage in your attack, I appreciated this more because it ensured the best workout possible. Because this was more than just a game, but indeed a way to live a more fit life, and I was equally interested in doing well for my own sake, not just the game’s.
I will also note that each move cannot be performed (including enemy attacks) until you are in the right position. Until you are, the game will wait patiently. Depending on the exercise, it will also ensure you’re situated properly by performing a countdown calibration. If you get out of position, the countdown will stop, and wait until you are ready.
Upon finishing a fight, you will be rewarded experience based on the exercises you performed and the enemies fought, along with money and sometimes items.
Upon finishing a level, you will be tasked with one final “victory squat” and then rewarded experience points based on everything you did in the level. You also have the option to check your heart rate via the sensor on the right joycon. I am unsure if it’s based off of heart rate readings or it’s just really good at knowing when I’ve had enough, but eventually the game will suggest that you end your session for the day. And more often than not, that suggestion always came right at the point where I knew I could not go on any further that day. I will note that each session ends as it began, with stretching. But, unlike the dynamic stretching at the start, this stretching is static, and changes based on which exercises you’d done and which portions of your body you focused on. Personally, I really valued the stretching as I rarely found myself injured by playing the game.
And that is basically the whole of Adventure mode in a nutshell. But there are many many little details that I would like to address as well. Like I said, I’ve been keeping notes for two years… I will try to be succinct, though so as to not turn this into a two year long read.
So, first off, I mentioned that you attack with exercise moves. Naturally, you’re going to be learning a lot of different moves over the course of playing. At first you start with four, but can eventually equip a total of ten. Early on, I found myself in a quandary when unlocking new moves (either through leveling up or by buying them in the ever growing skill tree… or maybe skill web is a more appropriate term…). Which exercises were best for my workout purposes and which exercises were best for dealing damage? The two don’t always coincide, and this was my greatest fear of going in to this game. Gamifying non gaming experiences can often hamper the original experience. As you obtained more moves later on, this issue became less of a problem, but it certainly felt unbalanced at first.
Later on presented its own problems, though, as I simply stopped learning new moves. I’s already apparently unlocked the best the game had to offer in terms of power. But sometimes, I felt like I was stagnating not switching up my routine anymore. Again. Gamification problems. A problem I didn’t really have an answer for, aside from just trying to push myself to my limits each session, regardless of my move sets. I will say course layouts and special gym levels varied up my routine often enough in their own right, at the very least.
One final note on moves. Each exercise has its own power rating. But I had no idea what those numbers truly meant. It wasn’t the damage output total, it wasn’t the damage per rep. It was always a mystery to me. I just knew higher numbers did more damage. Which was important, because you’re not the only one growing in the game. The enemies get gradually tougher as your progress.
As for the exercises themselves, it must be said… motion technology still isn’t quite there yet. The ringcon rarely gave me issues. But the leg strap was another issue entirely… Certain exercises, particularly squats, some yoga positions, and especially the Mountain Climber just would not register more often than not, despite my doing the exercises perfectly. It was often a source of annoyance for me.
I mentioned money a few times earlier. Naturally, there are shops in the open world (world layouts are like your basic Mario sidescrollers, i.e. Super Mario World). At the shops you can buy clothing (which increase your attack and defense stats and sometimes provide special bonuses if wearing a full set of top bottom and shoes), smoothies (which refill health and/or give various stat boosts), or smoothie ingredients (used in a very simplistic crafting system).
Aside from shops and traditional levels, you can often find minigames scattered throughout the game worlds. These minigames usually focus on a single exercise and task you with a certain goal (collecting tokens, fighting robots, etc.).
You can also encounter side quests called “requests.” These requests often have you revisiting a level or minigame with a specific challenge in mind (reach a certain rank in a minigame, clear a level without fighting any enemies, and so on). Rewards are as you would expect for clearing the side quests: clothing, items, money, etc.
I also briefly mentioned that certain abilities unlock over time. Things like being able to double jump, kayak through rivers, fly through the air, and even craft smoothies are all unlockable abilities that you gain simply by progressing the story. The abilities are Ring’s special powers and are made a big deal of, even though they seem rather disjointed from each other, and although unlocking them seems like a big story step, they all happen fairly early, to the point where I had forgotten they were “special” and not just something I always had accessible.
Finally, when all is said and done, you realize nothing is actually done. Upon beating the game, I found out that there is a special “New Game Plus” type of mode in the game. I say special because, although you keep everything you had in the previous game, you do not simply start over. You do go back to the first world, and have the entire game to replay, however, the enemies are much more difficult this time around (suggested starting level is 180), and its not exactly the same game, as it appears this time around, you aren’t “fighting” Dragaux. Instead, Dragaux is training you. I have not yet made much headway in this new mode yet, but I am excited to see where it takes me.
So, I mentioned I’d go over the other modes, so let’s get to that.
First off is Quickplay. Quickplay has a few options to choose from: Simple, Minigames, Sets, and Jogging.
Simple is extremely simple. It contains challenges that have you pushing or pulling or doing some other exercise with the ringcon. As many reps as you can as fast as you can. I greatly disliked this as it favors speed over form. A surefire way to injury. It also just doesn’t really provide a balanced work out.
Minigames is exactly what is sounds like. Just the option to replay any minigame found in adventure mode.
Sets, again, pretty much what it sounds like. You perform sets of exercises. In either the insultingly easy novice mode, or the slightly more difficult advanced mode.
And jogging… you guessed it. You jog through any given level of the game. No enemies. No items. Nothing but jogging.
Then there’s Custom mode. Custom mode is much like Quickplay, but with a bit more focus. You choose which part of the body you wish to work on, and the game will provide a set of randomized, predetermined exercises and minigames to play. It reminded me a lot of the “set gyms” in adventure mode (particularly brutal gyms where a certain portion of the body was the sole focus of the entire workout) but less severe.
Then we’ve got Multitask mode. This one baffled me… apparently the game expects you to plug in the joycon into the ringcon and simply push and pull etc. while the switch is off and you’re… watching tv or something? I don’t know. It seemed weird and pointless to me. Apparently if you did enough reps of… whatever you were supposed to do, you’d get rewarded with money and smoothies and stuff like that in Adventure mode. But still… pointless…
And finally we come to Rhythm mode… This one was very disappointing to me. It was added about halfway through my time with Adventure mode. But I promised myself I wouldn’t touch any other mode until I beat Adventure mode. That was a lot of build up for a whole lot of nothing. A watered down Dance Dance Revolution, or, Guitar Hero. You simply push or pull on the ring con in time with some circles flying at you on screen in time with a small handful of Nintendo songs. Not only is it boring as all get out, but I’d really like to meet the genius who thought that wretched Guardian “music” that plays every time you’re attacked by one in Breath of the Wild would be good work out music…
In general, I felt like all of these extra modes were unnecessary and did not provide as full of an experience as a single session in Adventure mode. I suppose I could see some value in Custom or certain aspects of Quickplay. But I’d personally rather stick with Adventure.
All in all, this was a game unlike anything I’d ever experienced. And certainly never something I thought I personally could handle with all my medical catastrophes. But I will be forever grateful for the experience it provided. And i look forward to playing it for years to come. Maybe if I’m lucky, they’ll put out a sequel around the time I finally finish New Game Plus.
