Ring Fit Adventure: Review

Nintendo has made no secret that they want their players to be active.  The Wii Fit games, the motion controls of the past consoles, the company at least tries to offer something to keep gamers from sitting on their couches or desks at all times.  The latest in Nintendo’s fitness line-up is Ring Fit Adventure — a game that uses more than just your body weight to give you a workout with the “Ring Con” Resistance Band accessory.  For better or worse, Ring Fit does what it sets out to do.  The objective is to have you work up a sweat and sort of forget that you’re giving your body some exercise by distracting your mind with a light role-playing game during the process.

The main attraction of Ring Fit Adventure is that you’re fighting your way through a fantasy world to defeat a bodybuilding dragon named Dragaux and his minions using Ring Con exercises.  Across the course of the adventure you’ll be tasked with sweeping up coins, breaking down doors, and traversing through different environments as you run into battle sequences where you must complete exercises to deal damage to enemies and defend yourself.  The Ring Con essentially allows you to snap one of the Joy Con controllers into the device, while the second is placed into the Leg Strap.  Using the two, you will do excercises like overhead presses, crunches, yoga poses, curls, targeting different muscle groups and your general stamina.  In each stage you will fight your way through to the end, which is considered to be an entire workout that’ll hit the different parts of your body that you select.  The story itself is light hearted and fun, and doesn’t have quite the touch that we’ve seen from Nintendo’s bigger franchises.  Same goes for the visuals, they aren’t quite up to the level that we see from some of the main line franchises.  However, for something in the nature of Ring Fit Adventure the visuals and presentation are good enough to keep your mind off the fact that this is a fitness game.

The Ring-Con is a resistance band that most certainly does its job in providing a challenge to Ring Fit Adventure players.  Nintendo gets creative with the different in-game activities to keep the exercises feeling fresh and you’ll definitely feel the band working its workout magic on you muscles as you use it.  Things like overhead squeezes, squats, yoga poses, curls, crunches and more are asked of you at certain points of your adventure and you’ll constantly be running in place, high-stepping, or squatting to move further and further into the world.  There are many different workout ideas incorporated into Ring Fit Adventure that can really give you a good workout as you progress through the game.  You will definitely feel the effects no matter your current physical fitness.  As someone who goes to the gym fairly regularly and combines weight training with cardio training I felt like the workouts were effective.  While the Ring Fit definitely wouldn’t have me trading my gym membership for this workout exclusively I also could see a potential for doing something like this in a pinch.  Ring Fit Adventure claimed that we were burning plenty of calories and I believe it given the sweat that was worked up hitting only a handful of Adventure missions.

The Battles with enemies are easily the most tiring part of the game.  You’ll have a handful of workouts to choose from to defeat the enemy, whether that’s one of the minions or Dragaux himself.  You’ll basically go through a circuit of training exercises in a short amount of time with different intensity levels.  At the end you either vanquish the smaller enemy standing in your path or you’ve completed a chapter in the game.  Either way, defeating enemies is extremely rewarding if just for that you have an in-game face to put on the real world pain.  And we say pain in a good way.  The burning you feel in your legs, arms, or shoulders definitely mean that the Ring-Con is doing its job.  There are a lot of different exercises you can do, as well as an adjustable skill level depending on how active you are prior to playing the game.  Don’t let it fool you, even a gym goer could have trouble with some the excercises if you just for how targeted they are AND how many reps the game could give you if you’re considered active and able to do them.

I do quite like the Ring Fit Adventure experience.  Living in Chicago, I could definitely see using this as a workout supplement in the cold winters where getting to the gym is a ton of hassle.  There are a couple of nice things about the game and the system as a healthcare app.  Ring Fit allows you to track your progress, monitor your heart rate, and see tangible improvements by increasing the difficulty of your workouts.  The Ring-Con and band feel like they are more than enough to get anyone on the path to physical fitness and deliver muscle toning.  You’re not going to look like 80’s Arnold Schwarzenegger after a few weeks with the game, but the potential is there to get your heart rate to a spot where you are burning calories and potentially losing weight.  The second is that this isn’t just an adventure game.  The other side of this is that there is a complete fitness experience that allows you to create exercises for yourself by building your own workouts or just playing specific mini-games.  If the Ring-Con exercises are working for you, you can play any of them at any time in the mini-game or simple modes, as well as build your own custom regimine.  The Ring-Con can also be used in a multi-tasking mode as well that lets you earn bonus XP on your fitness adventure by doing reps while you’re doing other things like watching TV.  Simply squeeze the Ring-Con while in multi-task mode and you’ll earn these points for yourself, or you can give them to a friend.

https://youtu.be/wvHELogbm2E

The Verdict

Ring Fit Adventure is a fun and wholly functional workout experience.  Nintendo walks you through every step of the process to make sure you’re doing things correctly to avoid injury or over-exertion.  Whether you’re playing adventure mode or just banging through your favorite mini-games or exercises, the Ring-Con delivers a workout that feels like it’s doing its job in getting your heart rate elevated to the point of burning calories and potentially fat.  The plus side is that the resistance side of the unique controller gives you the opportunity to tone or potentially build muscle depending on your diet and the amount that you use it.  There’s a lot to love here if you’re looking for a unique way to get your body moving on a fitness journey and plenty of feedback to monitor your progress along the way.