Continuing with my Ring Fit Adventure adventure1, these are the first full two weeks of working out with Ring Fit Adventure.
My plan is to work our every work day, but this weekend I could not stop myself from trying out a few more mini-games. On the other hand, I skipped two days, but felt bad and missed the routine.
Anyway, onwards with the adventure²! :D
Adventure mode¶
These weeks, according to the heart sensor, I am getting a light to moderate workout, which given that I seem to have caught a bit of a cold, is just about right. I also continue to stick to the game’s suggestion when to stop training for the day.
The difficulty level is still at 16. But I may ramp it up a bit next week, when I feel better.
World 3¶
On Monday I started with World 3 and so far it brought several new elements, keeping everything still fresh:
- (semi-)optional side-quest
- more mini-games – it seems through the Adventure mode the game plans to gradually introduce the player to all the mini-games, which is a neat trick
- NPCs
- shops for equipment, consumable items and ingredients
- equipment – changes stats
- consumable items – regenerates health, hints at other effects in the future
- ingredients and recipes to create consumables
- early signs of a plot twist
- new battle skills
World 4¶
This world provded a new hurdle that I needed to overcome with a new movement skill. Which I had to obtain by training (surprise there!).
In addition to a nice story loop (and plenty of puns again), again there were new things introduced:
- more ingredients and recipes – now they have additional effects like different attack buffs, better drops, or easier travel
- another shop with new equipment and consumables – it seems like from now on there will be a new shop with new items in every world
- optional side-quests of different kinds – one including a teleport
- even more new battle skills
- enemies with healing skills
- healing skill
- new movement skill
I even revisited World 3 and did some side-quests there. It seems like side-quests will pop up in previous worlds as one progresses to new ones. Which means revisiting previous worlds will be needed for a 100% run and they are also awarded with new skills and items, which is always neat.
General thoughts¶
So far, every world brought a new surprise, new gaming techniques and skills to master, at a very good pace. It seems to me it should not be too fast for newbies, but also does not seem to go too slow for veteran gamers.
What really needs praise is the level design. It might not be apparent at first, but once you start paying attention, you notice that it introduces not just great timing between slower and more intensive workouts, but also changes the types of workout either explicitly within the level or implied through the enemy choices and unlocking of new attack skills. If you look closely, you will even see that several levels have alternative paths.
Finally, I am honestly very positively surprised at the quality of the RPG elements in this game! Of course it is nowhere near D&D complexity, but it is much deeper and well made than it looks on face value. Again, easy to grasp, but still just meaty enough to keep veterans also engaged.
There are only two critiques I have at this stage:
- I would like the alarm to be done in a better way (but I do not have a great suggestion either); and
Some of the skills/workouts are two-part – e.g. Bow Pull, where for the first part you pull with one arm, and in the second part with the other. With these, if you defeat an enemy before you did your full workout, you basically just trained just one side of your body asymmetrically to the other. A simple fix would be to switch which is the first side every now and again.2
Tips¶
Target specific muscle groups
If you want to target specific muscle groups or do certain types of workouts, you can select the Sets tab in the Set Skills menu and there you will find pre-sets that target e.g. legs, or are good for posture, or concentrate on core muscles. I find it great that apart from just min-maxing, the game gives you a really easy way to customise your adventure play-through also to fit your needed/wanted workout best.
Stretching is important
Do not skip the pre-workout and the post-workout stretching – these are vital for a healthy workout. And a really cool thing Ring Fit Adventure does is that the post-workout/cooldown stretching varies depending on which muscle groups you trained during that session.
Quick Play and Custom mode¶
I also noticed that in Quick Play mode and Custom mode, all the workout skills are already present from the start, so if the Adventure mode3 does not appeal to you, the game does not force you to unlock them for your custom training sets.
After trying out a tiny bit the workout options outside the main Adventure mode, here is what I think of them.
Simple workouts seem to be basically in the gist of how many repetitions can you do in a given amount of time, and do not appeal to me much. Perhaps they are fun if you want to compete with friends in an (off the) couch co-op mode.
Minigames I find quite fun and are as entertaining as they are challenging. It may be that the novelty will wear off, but for now I am enjoying them quite a bit.
Workout Sets that target specific muscles or muscle groups are actually good and still remain quite fun, so it seems like a good choice for when you want to concentrate a bit on just one part of the body, core muscles, posture, or endurance.
Custom mode lets you assemble your own sets of workouts from the whole range of workout skills. For now I can just say they are super easy to set up and select, also from other users on the same system. I imagine these become useful later on, when you want to have more control of what you want to train that day.
Next time: first month or so.
hook out → still unsure whether I like Ring or Tipp better … although Dracaux is also growing on me slowly
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Ring Fit Adventure² for short ;) ↩
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Update: In the game’s settings there is (now?) an option on what to do when a enemy is defeated before you have finished the skill set. I warmly recommend setting it to (at least) continue when the skill is symetric. ↩
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I have to say, so far I am having a blast with Adventure mode though! ↩