Ring Fit Adventure – Is your body ready for an adventure?

Ring Fit Adventure is an exercising role-playing action game for Nintendo Switch. It uses Joy-Con controllers to track your movement with a Ring-Con and a leg strap addon that come with the game. The main feature of the game is the adventure mode. It has multiple worlds to explore that are filled with obstacles, tasks, and monsters. The adventure mode has 30 difficulty levels so you have a wide variety to choose from, from a really easy movement-based game to a serious challenging exercise.

The story of the adventure mode is simple. You accidentally release a muscular evil dragon named Dragaux who wants to get buffed and destroy the world (whoops). You have to stop Dragaux with your companion Ring, which is your Ring-Con controller. The story is not complex, but it’s filled with jokes and exercise-based puns that made me laugh.

Every world you visit is full of tasks to complete. They are mostly jogging levels where you move forward by jogging in your place with your Ring-Con. These levels are usually filled with obstacles where you have to do different tasks like squeezing the ring-con or do few squats. Even though these levels are a line from start to finish, the simple and colorful surroundings make the levels lively and beautiful that are great to look at while jogging.

The jogging levels are also filled with monsters. When you encounter them, the game turns into a turn-based RPG combat, where you use different moves to deal damage to the enemies. There are four categories of moves: arms, legs, abs, and yoga. There are over 40 different moves that you unlock while playing. Some of the moves target only one opponent, while others target three or five. Some of the moves are easier than others, for example, you could damage five enemies by shaking your hips or doing multiple mountain climber reps. There are also boss fights, but sadly Dragaux is half of these encounters which felt a little bit repetitive. Combat itself feels well done because it never felt too hard or easy. The wide variety of moves and enemies keeps these encounters interesting and versatile.

There is a lot to do in every world: there are battle arenas where you fight a bunch of enemies, minigames with different tasks, muscle-based exercise sets, and side quests to complete. There are also stores where you can change your gear to gain different boosts or you could buy smoothies that recover health or give temporary boosts. Every world offers many different tasks that the exercise doesn’t get boring or repetitive at all. When you have finished playing, the game gives you stretching suggestions based on what you did, different health tips, and reminds you about milestones you have done in the game, like how many squats you have done in total.

The mix of RPG-game elements and exercise amazes me. The game is so well done, that the movement-based actions don’t feel like a gimmick but a good exercise with interesting gameplay elements. The overall style of the game is joyful and encouraging that it made me more interested in exercising and a healthy lifestyle. It took me around 60 hours in total to complete the adventure mode, so it’s not a short game. The game has also other things to offer besides the adventure: there are additional challenges, custom workouts, and a rhythm game mode. I recommend this game to everyone who owns a Switch.

 

Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: Nintendo EPD

Platforms: Nintendo Switch

Release Date: 18.10.2019

Genres: Exergame, role-playing

PEGI 7

The pictures are taken by author.

You might also like

---

More from Game Reviews

---